Where would Jube have met his killer? A place where both would get into one car to drive up to Gay Head. The Ag Hall parking area would be too public, if the killer expected Burkhardt’s car to be left behind. The hiding place would have to be where a car could remain for a week or two weeks or even a month without anyone paying much attention to it. Someplace the police were not likely to check regularly. A place that wouldn’t make Jube Burkhardt suspicious if the killer were to suggest meeting there.
From where she sat, Victoria could see the roof of the garage across from the Ag Hall. Eighty years ago, the garage had been a blacksmith shop. She used to go there with her grandfather to have their horse Dolly shod.
The garage.
She got to her feet, holding the arms of her chair.
“Elizabeth,” she called to her granddaughter, who was putting books away in the living room.
“Yes, Gram?”
“I know where Jube Burkhardt’s car is.”
Elizabeth set the books she was holding onto the coffee table. “Where?”
“At the old blacksmith shop. Tiasquam Repairs. There’s that area in back where people leave cars to be worked on, or summer people store them until they return from vacation.”
“But why would Burkhardt leave his car there?”
“I imagine the killer told Jube he needed to leave his own car for some work, an oil change, something simple like that. He’d have said, ‘No point in taking two cars all the way to Aquinnah, besides my car needs some work.’ After he killed Jube, he drove Jube’s car to the lot and picked up his own.”
“His or her,” Elizabeth said. “Okay, Gram, let’s go. Do you know what kind of car Burkhardt drove?”
Victoria had already started out the door. “He drove a red Volvo 1985.” She gathered up her walking stick from the entry, marched down the steps ahead of Elizabeth, and got into the car.
They drove past the police station and the millpond, and slowed on Brandy Brow. Joe and the usual gang were sitting on the porch of Alley’s store. Taffy barked from the driver’s seat of Joe’s truck as they passed. Sarah waved.
“Don’t those guys ever work?” asked Elizabeth.
Victoria looked at her watch. “It’s after five.”
They turned in at the gas station and went down a bumpy dirt road to the garage, which was closed for the day. Behind the garage, a field of stored cars waited for owners to claim them. “There must be two dozen red Volvos here,” Elizabeth said in dismay. “We’ll never be able to single his car out, even if it is here.”
“We can eliminate any that have grass growing up around their tires. Also, any that have out-of-state license plates.”
After they had paced up and down the weedy aisles between cars, Elizabeth said, “We’re down to three red Volvos.”
“This one seems promising,” Victoria said. “Cardboard cartons, a couple of milk crates full of papers, and a couple of bags full of soda cans.” She moved to another car. “This one has a soccer ball, a child’s soccer shirt, candy wrappers, a copy of Mad Magazine, a doll.” Victoria crossed it off her list.
“Not this one either,” Elizabeth said.
Victoria cupped her hands against the windshield to look in. She set in motion a plastic grass-skirted hula dancer stuck to the dashboard with a suction cup. Next to the dancer were wadded-up tissues with lipstick smears.
“Back to the first of the three.” Victoria strode through the long grass to the car, opened the passenger door, and sat on the stained and worn seat.
“Should we be doing this?” Elizabeth looked around behind them, as if she expected someone to stop them.
Victoria opened the glove compartment. “Of course we should.” She lifted out a handful of papers, paper napkins, plastic ketchup containers, and white plastic spoons. She sorted through them and put everything back except an envelope from the Vineyard Insurance Agency. She opened the envelope and examined the policy. “It’s made out to Jubal M. Burkhardt.”
“Can we leave now?” Elizabeth asked.
Victoria nodded. “We’ll stop at the police station and report to Casey.”
Casey was coming down the steps as they parked in front of the station. She walked over to the passenger side, and Victoria rolled down the window.
“Good job, Deputy,” Casey said after Victoria told her about finding Jube’s car. “I’ll notify his nieces and the Aquinnah police.”
Elizabeth started to say something, but Victoria put her hand on her granddaughter’s knees. Elizabeth looked at her, surprised. Victoria had arranged her face into a warning, and Elizabeth stopped in midsentence.
As they pulled away from the police station, Elizabeth said, “Why did you stop me, Gram? I wanted to tell the chief that Dojan and you found the weapon.”
“She’ll know soon enough. Before they declare Jube’s house a crime scene, we need to look around again. We’re missing something.”
“You can’t do that, Gram. It’s trespassing or tampering with evidence or something.”
“It’s not tampering with evidence,” Victoria said. “The police have closed the case. Accidental death. Will you drive me there, or shall I walk?”
“I’ll drive you,” Elizabeth muttered. She backed out of the parking spot, oyster shells crunching beneath her tires, and retraced the route to Burkhardt’s house.
“We’ve got to find Hiram,” Victoria said. “And the key to finding him is in that house.”
The haze thickened as they drove toward Burkhardt’s place. They reached the open grassy area, where his house stood, desolate in the tall grass, and pulled up next to the barn.
A clammy fog was sifting in from the ocean, bringing with it the sulfurous smell of tidal flats and the iodine smell of seaweed. The windshield was beaded with droplets of mist. Elizabeth put the top back up on her convertible while Victoria walked over to the barn. The door was ajar, the way it had been when she had first seen the motorcycle tracks the day before. She pushed the door open. The hinges shrieked.
A seagull on the roof of the house raised its wings, opened its bill, and echoed the sound of the door, a long drawn-out mournful cry followed by a series of short calls. It lifted off the roof, followed by six other gulls, ghostly forms that dissolved along with their cries into the thin fog.
The surf rumbled on the other side of the barrier bar. A fish splashed in the pond. When she opened the barn door, something rushed by her head noiselessly. She had disturbed a barn owl. There were not many places left on the Island where barn owls could nest.
She looked down at the floor. There, in the dust, was a second set of motorcycle tracks, scuffed over by at least two, possibly three, sets of boot prints.
“What do you make of that?” Victoria said to Elizabeth, who had come up behind her. “These marks were made sometime after Casey and I were here yesterday afternoon.”
“Maybe Junior Norton made the prints when he came to check out the stain on the floor?”
Victoria shook her head. “He came in the police car.”
“Maybe Burkhardt’s niece and her biker friend?”
“I don’t know.” Victoria left the barn door ajar so the owl could return. “Let’s go through the house again. There must be a clue as to Hiram’s whereabouts somewhere in there.”
As they walked across the dry grass, there was an explosive qwawk and a rush of wings. A large blue-gray bird materialized out of the mist and flew low over them toward the pond.
Elizabeth let out a startled cry.
“Night heron,” Victoria said.
“This place is bad enough in bright sun.”
“Wait out here if you want while I go inside.”
“I’m sticking with you.” Elizabeth trailed after her grandmother, who had opened the entry door and was already inside Burkhardt’s house.
Elizabeth sniffed. “Stinks in here. How could he stand it?”
“It’s the humidity,” Victoria said. “It brings out mildew.”
Somethi
ng swished past them with small clicking sounds, almost touching Elizabeth’s hair. She screamed.
Victoria looked around in alarm, then laughed. “A bat. That accounts for the smell. Let’s start at his computer and work back toward the entry.” They threaded their way down the narrow aisle between stacks of Burkhardt’s keepsakes to his desk and table, piled with papers and books. The stain, now dark brown, had a chalk mark around it.
“I guess Junior took a sample?” Elizabeth said.
Victoria stopped abruptly and Elizabeth bumped into her. “Something isn’t right.”
“Nothing is right,” Elizabeth said. “It’s getting dark. Let’s get Casey. We won’t find Hiram this way.”
“It’s the computer,” Victoria said. “When we were last here, it read ‘Fatal Error’ in white letters on a blue background. I remember because it seemed so macabre. Now it’s blank.”
“No wonder. The CPU is gone.”
“CPU?” Victoria turned to her granddaughter.
“The central processing unit, the box the monitor sits on. It has the hard drive in it. It’s gone.”
CHAPTER 10
“What are you talking about?” asked Victoria.
“The guts of the computer. The hard drive contains everything.”
“Perhaps Howland Atherton took it away. I asked Casey to have him look at the computer, but she didn’t.”
“Maybe she changed her mind,” said Elizabeth.
“If Howland were to take just that box, he wouldn’t need the monitor or keyboard, would he?”
“He wouldn’t need these particular ones,” said Elizabeth, pointing to the blank screen and the keyboard. “He could borrow someone else’s to read the files.”
“I’m sure he’d have said something to me if he’d taken it.” Victoria studied the desk where the base had been. “Could the unit be carried on a motorcycle?”
Elizabeth lifted her shoulders. “I guess so, although it would be awkward. Maybe Junior Norton took it?”
“Casey’s sergeant wouldn’t have taken something without informing her. And Casey would have told me.” Victoria shook her head. “We’d better get busy. We don’t have much time before dark.”
She started a systematic search, for what, she wasn’t sure. Any clue to Hiram’s whereabouts. Had he left something here? She looked in places where she herself might have left something, next to the telephone book, by the dictionary, beside a picture. Before it became any darker, she would need to go down the aisles of Jube’s collections, see if she could find any trace of Hiram. She didn’t want to go upstairs to the second floor, and she certainly didn’t want to draw attention by turning on lights.
“He has a cordless phone,” Elizabeth said, lifting the instrument out of its cradle. “Phew! The smell is really getting to me.” She fanned her hand in front of her face. “I bet he programmed numbers into the phone.” She slid a panel on the back of the instrument and found a list of names.
Victoria stopped her search briefly to look.
“The first two are the governor’s office and the Environmental Protection Agency,” said Elizabeth. “A couple of other numbers like MIT and Wampanoag headquarters.”
Victoria continued her search, moving away from the computer table, examining items that larded the stacks.
“One is for Harley. Any idea who that might be?” asked Elizabeth.
“Perhaps the elder niece, Harriet. The one who lives with the motorcyclist.”
“I suppose he rides a Harley. Cute.” Elizabeth made a face. “The next one is Linda. The other niece?”
“The younger.” Victoria stood with arms crossed.
“Here’s one for Bugs.”
“I have no idea what that would be.” Victoria scanned the piles on either side of her, then retraced her steps down one of the side passages.
“I’m going to call.” Elizabeth pressed a number.
Victoria started to tell her not to, when someone answered. She could hear, even across the room, a man’s raspy voice, “Bugs here.”
Elizabeth hung up quickly.
“That was not a good idea,” Victoria said. “What did you hope to learn from that?”
“I don’t know. He sounded like something out of a 1940s gangster movie.”
The phone rang. They looked at each other.
“Don’t answer,” said Victoria, but Elizabeth had already picked up the phone. Before she answered, the voice on the other end said, loud enough for Victoria to hear, “What do you want, Burkhardt? Better be important.”
“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said in a small voice. “I must have dialed the wrong number.”
“Wait a minute, lady. I dialed star sixty-nine, and it rang Burkhardt’s number. You want to explain?”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, and hung up.
“Well,” said Victoria. “Well, well. That was odd.”
“That was stupid of me.” Elizabeth blotted her forehead with a paper towel she’d taken from her pocket.
Victoria moved down the side passage. She brushed against a tall stack and it toppled over, knocking her down.
“Gram, are you okay?”
“Yes. Help me out of this mess.”
Elizabeth moved an old typewriter case off Victoria’s legs. A flattened cardboard box. Used gift-wrapping paper, card still attached. Burned-out lightbulbs, seed packets.
She moved a wire basket and a flyswatter and a mousetrap with a mummified mouse and copies of the town report for 1975 and an ancient Sears Roebuck catalog.
Victoria lifted her arm. “Give me your hand so I can stand up without anything else falling onto me.” Elizabeth helped her to her feet.
The telephone rang. They looked at each other.
Victoria frowned. “This time, don’t answer.”
The phone continued to ring. Neither Victoria nor Elizabeth moved until it stopped after a dozen rings.
Somewhere in the house something shifted, and there was the sound of a heavy object falling.
“What was that?” Elizabeth stood still. “Let’s get out of here. Now.” She started back down the narrow aisle between the stacks of junk. “You didn’t get hurt when that stuff fell on you?”
“Of course not. I’m fine. But I’d like to know what made that noise.”
“We’ve got to get out of here before it gets darker.”
The diffuse light coming through the dusty windows gave the shadows an undefined quality. The stacks of rubbish and papers began to blend together. Even to Victoria it was as if they were morph- ing into a gray dough.
The bat circled again, swished low, swooped high, making its eerie clicking noise.
Once they were outside, Victoria looked back at the house. The mist gave the low sun a sickly green hue. Dusk had reduced colors to shades of gray. The cedar trees across the cove were a dark graygreen. The grasses, dripping with condensation, were a grayish tan. The house itself was almost black. It must have been a lonely place for a man living by himself with nothing but his computer and piles of stuff that he might find a use for someday.
“Where do you suppose the computer is?” Victoria turned toward the house. “I’ve got to go back and make one more attempt to find it.” She started toward the kitchen door.
Elizabeth caught her grandmother’s sleeve. “No way!”
As Victoria turned to reply, she saw flashing blue lights jouncing along the track that led through the woods. The police Bronco pulled up next to Elizabeth’s car.
“I might have known.” Casey leaned out her window.
Victoria walked over to the passenger side. “What are you doing here?”
“I got an anonymous call from a guy who said there was an intruder at Burkhardt’s place. What are you doing here?”
“Did he have a raspy voice?” Elizabeth asked.
Casey stepped out of the Bronco, and shifted her belt with gun, radio, and handcuffs to a more comfortable position.
“Yes, he had a raspy voice. You’re trespassing,
you know that.”
“Nonsense. The door wasn’t locked.”
“Get in the Bronco, Victoria.”
“I’ll meet you back at the house,” Elizabeth said.
The road through the woods was dark now. The Bronco’s headlights magnified every rock and root and pothole.
Casey listened while Victoria told her about the missing computer and the phone call.
“You simply must not handle evidence that way,” Casey said when Victoria finished.
“There was no reason to think I was handling any evidence,” Victoria replied. “You police are calling his death an accident.”
“Not anymore, Victoria. The Aquinnah police chief called me. That wicked hook you guys found matches the wound on Burkhardt’s skull. They’ve reopened the case.” Casey steered around a large pothole. “The state police are now treating Burkhardt’s death as murder.”
CHAPTER 11
Victoria walked to the police station the next morning to hear Casey’s explanation of why the Aquinnah police had changed their minds about Jube Burkhardt’s death. When she arrived, Casey was on the radio with Junior Norton.
“Mrs. Summerville, Chief,” said Junior. “She’s complaining about motorcyclists camping in her pasture.”
“I’ll check on Mrs. S., Junior. Where are you now?”
“Behind Maley’s. Got more bikers camping out here. I’ll make sure they’ve got sanitary facilities and water.”
“Roger.” Casey hung up the mike. “I’ll be glad when this rally is over. The bikers aren’t as bad as they want us to think, but there are five hundred of them. That’s an awful lot for the Island to absorb.”
“You know where Mrs. Summerville lives, don’t you?” Victoria asked.
“Somewhere near that split oak in North Tisbury?”
“On the road branching off to the left. I’ll show you.”
“Let’s go, then.”
Victoria climbed into her seat in the Bronco, and Casey took off toward North Tisbury. She had slowed to negotiate the sharp curve by the cemetery, when a string of seven motorcycles roared up behind them and passed, cutting across the solid line in the middle of the road. Casey swerved onto the grass to their right as a car approached from the other direction. The bikers cut sharply in front of the police vehicle as the driver of the oncoming car went off the road with a squeal of brakes.
INDIAN PIPES Page 7