Cape Cod caper

by Margot Arnold

  They went off to the lonely house and picked up the inevitable accompaniment of the orange cat. Carson watched her with curiosity as she hastily riffled through the pages of the neat albums, finally coming on the one she sought with a little squeak of satisfaction. "Hmm,'" he said, and looked at it critically. "World War II, before my uncle even knew Dimola. What's important about that?" "Zeb was never in the army, was he?" Penny asked. "No, just a bit too young for that war and by Korea he was too valuable home here." "Were you in the forces?"

  He scowled at her. "Yes, I was in the Vietnam fiasco-why?"

  '"I just thought you might be able to decipher these doodles I found of your uncle's—he must have made them quite recently and some of it looks like army gobbledy-gook." She produced the scrap of paper, which he studied with morose interest.

  "Well, 'RD' is presumably Rinaldo Dimola, '1st pit. 3 CE 3rd Div.' could be first platoon, third division of the Corps of Engineers—which would make sense since he is an engineer. The 'PC could be a person's initials..."

  "Or prison camp," said Penny with sudden enlightenment. "He was a prisoner."

  "Oh. I didn't know that! So I suppose the 'It. Camp.* could be an Italian camp, perhaps at the place he mentions, Imola."

  "Or Italian campaign at Imola," Penny mused. "Anyway, that's why I want the photo. I have a friend out in Italy just now and I want him to do some checking for me. I wonder if there's another photo of Dimola smiling..." She hastily flipped through the album again, but all the photos of Rinaldo were either stern or solemn of face. "Oh, well, this will have to do," she said with a sigh, "at least these give me an inkling of why the big photo was stolen."

  "Why?" His tone was nettled.

  "Because he was smiling." Penny said to complete his mystification. "Now we can go on to the second thing I had in mind—you're being a great help," she comforted. "I'd like to go over to the Indian site and have you bear witness to whatever I find in that grave."

  "You know," Carson said in a carefully controlled voice, "I'm really beginning to have serious doubts about you. Are you crazy? You've already told me Zeb dug it up and found nothing. Why the hell do it again?"

  "Because Zeb was in such a hurry that day, expecting to find the body, that he may have overlooked something small from the body—a button, some hairs, something, anything, to prove the body was there, something to prove my theory right and that the local police can't ignore."

  "Oh, O.K., at least there's some sense to that," he huffed.

  He fetched digging tools, to which Penny added a sieve, and they set off in his car. Penny was about to give him directions when she noted with interest that he didn't need any; he was heading for the site like a homing pigeon. "So you know where it is," she said casually.

  "Sure, Bobby and I often used to give Zeb a hand with it," he replied, bumping off down the narrow, overgrown track, "Kind of interesting so long as you don't let it get to you."

  Weeds were starting to grow on the filled-in trenches but the outlines of the site were still clearly visible, and after a brief consultation of the site plan Penny led the way up the slope of the hill to the line of graves. "This is it," she said, and seized a shovel. The sleet had stopped, but it was still very cold.

  "Here, why don't you let me do that," Carson volunteered. "It beats freezing."

  "Oh, fine!" she accepted with gracious alacrity. "You dig and I'll sieve until we get down to the burial, then I'd better take over."

  They set to work in silence, though Carson kept a careful eye on her as she sieved the spadefuls of loose earth, as if doubting her capabilities. Nothing rewarded their efforts until he was about two feet down, when he suddenly said, "What's that? I caught a flash of something as I dumped that last spadeful."

  She pawed through the earth and came up with a muddy orange capsule. "Oh, it's nothing," she said airily, "some kind of cold capsule or something—probably dropped out of Zeb's pocket."

  "Let me see it." There was a curious note in his voice.

  She handed it over and he cleaned it off and then, very carefully, twisted it open and took out and tasted a little of the powder inside with his tongue before screwing it back together again. "That's no cold capsule," he said in the same odd voice.

  "What is it then?"

  He cocked a strong eyebrow at her. "I can't be one hundred per cent sure until the lab tests it, but I think it's Speed." She looked blank. "It's an 'upper,' " he explained patiently, "a drug."

  "Oh, no!" she moaned in dismay. "First murder, now drugs again! I must be hexed or John Everett is a prophet."

  "Well, one thing I'm sure about," he said as he resumed digging, "it didn't come out of Zeb's pocket. That's a young person's turn-on. not his kind of scene at all."

  Nothing further rewarded his efforts, and in a while he rested on his spade and said, "I think I'm getting near the bottom, I can see a pot."

  "All right. I think you'd better let me take over now." Penny slid into the trench and was engulfed by it. Carson knelt on the edge peering down as she carefully cleared the Indian skeleton with whisk broom and trowel. "I wish Toby were here, he's the expert on this kind of thing." she said presently, as the outlines of the crushed skeleton became defined. "It's not that I don't know what I'm doing, but it's been so long since I did this I'm terrified of missing something. I'm an anthropologist not an archaeologist: people, not pots, are my forte. And even as a student my archaeological technique was nothing to write home about." Carson merely grunted but continued to watch intently. "You know," she went on, "I've been mulling over the sequence of events here and I'd like to try them out on you to see if you caaspot any flaws in my thinking. Zeb saw this grave was disturbed, dug into it, and found the body. I don't think he knew who it was but he recognized a likeness— either of someone linked to Rinaldo or someone who looked like Rinaldo. He was in a fine old quandary because Rinaldo had already been stricken with the stroke so he couldn't consult him. Hearing about me being over here he called me in. But the murderer somehow got wind of this and the fact he had found the body, moved it, and also took steps to make sure that in the unlikely event it was found again no one else would recognize it. Hence the stripping of the body and the mutilation of the face. Yet the murderer then made no move against Zeb, which clearly indicates to me that it is someone who knows him well; well enough to know that as long as the body is tied in to Rinaldo. Zeb will keep quiet. Even when the body is found again, he still makes no move against him..."

  "Why do you say him?" Carson interjected. "Why not she? Neither the method of the murder nor the attack on Zeb would have taken any great strength. It could have been done by a woman."

  "I was just speaking generally," Penny said mildly. "Naturally I haven't ruled out a woman, but it's so clumsy to go on saying 'he or she.' Anyway, to go on. The murderer only makes a move when he knows I'm on my way here again. Which indicates to me that Zeb in that intervening time may have found out who it was, may actually have tackled him about it, and was silenced before he could tell air to me as he had indicated in his letter. The would-be murderer had an unlucky break in that his attempt did not succeed, but a lucky one when the cases were put in the hands of two separate police forces. He'll be sweating blood if Zeb shows any signs of coming out of his coma, but so far this is not the case, though luckily Officer Birnie has enough sense to see he is well guarded."

  Carson Grange moved restlessly, sending a cascade of stones and earth down on Penny. "Which seems to leave you in a highly vulnerable position, I'd say."

  "No, not really, not while I'm groping in the dark as I still am. The murderer knows Zeb didn't tell me anything, or I'd have already done something about it. He also knows that if he attacked me it would be a dead giveaway that the two cases were one and then he'd have two police forces on his neck. So, for the moment, I don't think I'm in the slightest danger—aah!" She suddenly pounced on something near the midriff of the skeleton and began to clean off the clinging sandy mud, then held the object up triumpha
ntly to Carson.

  "What is it?" With a frown he took the crooked red plastic object.

  "Well, I can't be sure, but to me it looks remarkably like the bottom half of a 'cornu,' you know, those fertility charms made in the shape of a goat's horn. You find them all over the Mediterranean area, but particularly in Italy, mark you!"

  "You also find them here." he pointed out. "Half the kids in America wear something along this line round their necks: ankhs, crosses, pukka beads or these things."

  "I've seen them in metal over here, but never as big as this or in plastic. I have a duplicate of this from Italy on a key ring back home in Oxford, and I'm willing to bet that's exactly what this came off of—they're very flimsy, mine's always falling off. Anyway, one thing I am sure of, it's recent in the grave and certainly is no Indian artifact!"

  "It's not very much," he growled as she burrowed feverishly on. The sleet had started again, which didn't help, and after a few minutes of silence he went on. '"How much longer are you going to be? I'm freezing up here."

  Penny eased her cramped limbs and stood up. "I guess I've done about all I can; this sleet is turning everything into a mud puddle. Let's take what we have to the police and fill this in again. If we can get them interested 111 have another go at it." She crawled out and helped him shovel enough back to cover the remains, then shivered her way back to the car. There they had a brisk argument as to which police they should take their finds to, which warmed them both up and which Penny won. "It only makes sense to take it to the Barnstable people in view of my previous statement to them," she said. "This backs it up, and they'll have to start taking things seriously. Then, when we've done that, you can brief your people and get them in on it too."

  Disregarding the fact they were both mud-covered and wetly bedraggled, they drove into Hyannis and to the police station on North Street, where their decrepit state raised the eyebrows of the policeman on the desk. With some difficulty they managed to convince him they had urgent business with Detective Thompson, and when they were ushered into his office found him in conference with a glum-faced Officer Birnie. The latter's eyes narrowed suspiciously as Penny introduced Carson Grange, but he said nothing as Thompson waved them to scats and asked in an improbable New York accent what could he do for them or what was on their minds.

  Penny launched enthusiastically into her recital, to which he listened, eyes downcast, face expressionless, and twiddling a pencil between meaty fingers. Only when she got to the finding of the capsule did he look up, and after Carson had handed it over with some reluctance, went through the same performance of unscrewing it, tasting it, and pronouncing that it was indeed Speed. He looked across at Birnie and smirked. "Another nail in his coffin, I'd say. Nice bit of corroborative evidence with the rest of what we've got."

  Birnie looked even gloomier, and Penny, who had been halted in mid-flow of her recital and whose mind was still firmly fixed on the body, said, "You mean you've found out his identity? You think this may be linked with him too?"

  Thompson looked blandly at her. "Oh, you're still harping on that, are you? Well, I don't know anything about all that, nor do I know exactly what you think you're playing at. Dr. Spring. But I should point out that, although you seem to think otherwise, we are policemen and we do know our business. You can stop worrying about finding out who attacked Zeb Grange. You see, we found him and we arrested him this morning. We got our man!"

  CHAPTER 11

  "I don't believe it, I'm sure you've got the wrong man. It just isn't right, hie doesn't fit in at all!" Penny was so upset that she was comforting herself with a hamburger and french fries in the Hyannis Howard Johnson's. Across from her in the dark blue booth Carson Grange and Officer Birnie made an ill-assorted couple, sitting shoulder to shoulder and despondently sipping coffee; of the two Ernie Birnie, for all his official success, was looking the gloomier.

  "I'm no happier about this than you are," he sighed. "I've known that kid since grade school; he and my boy have been friends for years. But there's a case against him all right, particularly now with the stuff you brought in— motive, means, opportunity." He ticked them off on meaty fingers. "He and Zeb Grange have been feuding over that damn Indian site all along, and he's been heard to threaten Grange with violence. We have a witness who saw him running away from the bog that day. Then there's this drug business. He's been in trouble over marijuana before, and we've had our eye on him for some time, thinking he might be involved with pushing pills to the local kids. On top of that is the physical evidence—bog mud and blood on that old pair of sneakers we found in his house, and the key to the padlock on the cranberry barn, which he may have lifted from Zeb. We think from signs in the barn he must have been using it as a drop point for someone on the estate; maybe he used the Indian site as well. No, it looks like Eagle Smith all right."

  "But just because he was on the bog that day needn't mean anything," Penny protested. "What does he say about it?"

  "Not a damn thing, the young fool. He's hell-bent on being the impassive Indian martyr—a latter-day Cochise suffering for his people. Just sits and smiles and won't say a word, which does not help him one damn bit."

  "But can you honestly see him deliberately clubbing Zeb down and leaving him to die in the mud? Does he strike you as capable of that?"

  Birnie looked gloomier than ever. "I know he's a king-size pain in the a—neck, and I can well believe he might be mixed up in popping and peddling pills, but, no, I wouldn't have thought him vicious. He's a big mouth, but for all his talk he has never been involved in any local Violence. Still, who knows with kids these days..." he trailed off. Then, "Anyway what I think doesn't matter, Thompson is convinced of it and he's going to keep him in the slammer until the kid admits it or Grange comes around enough to tell us. The kid can't raise bail, he and his folks are dirt poor. What mainly worries me is what this is going to do to the community. There's been bad blood locally ever since the Mashpee land case. Now the Indians are going to say he's being railroaded because he's a militant Indian, and the rest are going to say that the Indians are getting dangerous and there'll be general hell to pay. Thompson, not being a local man, just doesn't appreciate that side of it."

  "And I'm with the Indians," Penny said stoutly. "On the flimsy evidence you've got it seems to me he is being railroaded. Detective Thompson steadfastly refuses to believe this other evidence that links Zeb's attack with the bog murder. He simply disregarded our other find in the grave —wouldn't even listen!"

  "You mean that red plastic doodad? I can't see that means anything myself. It could have been the kid's as well, if he was using the grave as a drop."

  "An Indian with an Italian 'cornu'?" Penny said heatedly. "Out of the question. It would mean nothing to him. Besides, it was at the bottom of the grave. It strikes me you are overlooking one important thing, one thing that might explain the blood on Eagle Smith's sneakers and his hurry to leave the bog that day; someone was not about to let Zeb die. choked in the mud of that ditch, someone turned him over and then was scared off by my approach—remember, I heard that movement in the bushes—someone who, either because he had no legal business there or because he was known to be at odds with Zeb, was too scared to stay around. That someone could be Eagle Smith who, far from clobbering Zeb, may well have saved his life."

  Birnie looked at her with narrowed eyes. "You may have something there," he admitted.

  "Then why don't you ask him?" Penny urged.

  "I doubt if he'd talk to me—he doesn't trust anyone in a uniform."

  "Then what about letting me see him and talk to him?"

  "Thompson would never go for it. Besides, why would Eagle talk to you either?"

  "Because all through my career I've fought for Indian rights. I've fought for the Fox, the Pueblo, even for the Apaches," Penny said heatedly. "I happen to be one of the unpopular minority who think the Indians in this country have had a very raw deal, and who have tried to do something about it. Perhaps it's time for me to
start fighting for the Wampanoags. If Eagle Smith knows anything at all about the rest of the Indian movements, he would at least have heard of me, so there must be some way to get to him and open him up. I'll just have to get him out. Maybe I can get the Dimolas to stand bail for him. In the meantime. Officer Birnie, may I make a pact with you? I know you think I'm an infernal nuisance, but Tm interested in the truth just as you are and I'm convinced Tm on the brink of a breakthrough on the bog murder, although I still have a lot to find out. I have sources closed to you and you have sources closed to me. If I keep you informed of what I find out, will you do the same for me?—particularly about Eagle Smith?"

  "Sounds fair enough," he agreed cautiously, "but don't expect too much from me, and I still think you're barking up the wrong tree."

  Later, as Carson drove her back to Masuit, she remarked. "I do hope he means what he said. Do you think he will help?"

  "He might, particularly since he doesn't believe Eagle Smith is the culprit. He has a better suspect in mind."

  "Oh? Who's that?"

  "Me." Carson smiled grimly at her. "Birnie tends to be a bit elephantine in his approach. While you were arguing with Thompson, he asked me if I knew my uncle carried life insurance. As it happens I did. When I admitted this he came on a bit stronger. Did I know the beneficiary? I knew that too. It's a fairly new policy and $150,000 is a lot of money, especially for a cop who is trying to keep his son out of the hands of his blackmailing wife. You see my wife ran off with another man two years ago. At that time she wanted no part of Bobby any more than she wanted me. Now she and her boyfriend are hard up and she's trying to get money out of me, using Bobby's custody as a club—she knows the courts usually tend to favor the mother. There's a limit to what you can get out of a state cop's salary"—he grimaced—"but she even tried to put the arm on Zeb. telling him all sorts of lies about me. Not that he had much either, but with that insurance policy..." He stared hard at Penny, who was contriving to look innocently ignorant. "Zeb took the policy out only last year. He told me that it was his sole asset, because the house he lives in belongs to the Dimolas and his pension from them stops with his death. He said he wanted to have something to leave to me since I was his only kin and he's got very fond of Bobby..." He drew the car up carefully beside Penny's at the Langley cottage and turned off the engine; he looked straight ahead out of the windshield. "All very innocent and understandable really, but it makes one hell of a motive. Or so thinks Birnie, and the word is spreading. I've been getting some mighty peculiar looks from my colleagues the last couple of days." He glanced at her and a sudden grin transformed his face. "But don't look so worried—I didn't do it, honest! I just thought I'd let you know because Birnie and I both now have excellent and opposite reasons for helping you. I'm with you all the way. What's the next step?"