I left her photo with some people, but I didn’t want to paper the island with her face. If Christa saw it, there was the danger that she’d hole up or flee, and then I’d never find her. So I chose carefully—people who I felt reasonably confident would not be indiscreet.
A little after noontime I figured I’d done what I could in Edgartown. Geographically, Oak Bluffs should be my next stop, but I’d already put in some time there, so I headed over to Vineyard Haven.
I spent an hour or so walking around the ferry landing and then began strolling the narrow streets just up the hill, and on one of those streets I spotted a couple of college kids, a boy and a girl, coming out of a tattoo parlor. The girl was as tall as the boy, and she had long, jet-black hair, which she wore in a long braid that dangled down the middle of her back. From behind, I thought it might be Christa.
I crossed the street, looped around ahead of them, crossed back, and started down the sidewalk toward them. As they approached me, I stopped and pretended to look into a shop window. I didn’t want Christa to recognize me. Not until I had a plan for approaching her. Finding her was the first step.
Well, this girl wasn’t Christa. Right age, right height, right hair color, right complexion. But her face was too round, her mouth was too small, and her nose was wrong.
I don’t know why it made me feel good to spot someone who vaguely resembled Christa, but it did. It felt like progress.
That couple had come out of a tattoo parlor. I went in.
Tattoos were no longer the exclusive domain of sailors and bikers and prison convicts. I remembered all the earrings that Christa wore. If she was into body piercing, maybe she was also into tattoos.
The walls of the little shop were lined with colored drawings that were, I assumed, tattoo designs. Many of them were quite elaborate and artistic. There were Indian chiefs in full headdress, a variety of American-flag motifs, bald eagles, cartoon characters, dozens of religious pictures ranging from simple crosses to crosses with Jesus nailed to them. There were animals and fish and reptiles and lizards and butterflies and bugs. There were abstract designs and ancient symbols and alphabets.
A woman was leaning her elbows on the counter. Dark blonde hair cut in a Beatles mop-top, rimless glasses, flowered blouse buttoned primly to the throat. She looked like a fifth-grade schoolteacher—a bit out of place in a tattoo parlor. She had her chin in her hands, and she was smiling at me.
“Are you the artist?” I said to her.
“I’m one of ’em,” she said. “I’m Stormy.”
“Brady,” I said.
“First time?”
“Huh?”
“First tattoo?”
“Oh,” I said. “No. I don’t think I want a tattoo.”
“Window-shopping, huh?”
“Something like that. I didn’t even realize tattooing was legal in Massachusetts.”
“It’s only been a few years,” she said. “I used to work in New Hampshire.”
“So is business good?”
“Unbelievable. Last few weeks we’ve had to make appointments for people.”
“Actually,” I said, “I’m trying to find somebody. I wonder if you might’ve seen her.” I showed her Christa’s picture.
She looked at it, then looked up at me. “Why are you looking for this girl?”
I told her about Mike and Neddie Doyle.
Stormy hesitated. “That’s the truth, huh?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a lawyer?”
I nodded.
“She was here,” she said.
“Really? You sure?”
“I’m pretty sure. It was, oh, a week ago. I didn’t do her, but I was here when she came in. She’s the kind of girl you notice.”
“Who, um, did her, then?”
“Buster. He’s out back with a client now. You can talk to him when he’s done if you want.”
“I definitely do,” I said. “Tell me what you remember about Christa.”
Stormy shrugged. “Not much. I noticed her, that’s all. She was with a guy, I think. I didn’t pay too much attention. I was talking with somebody else, and she was with Buster. You should talk to him.”
“I will. How soon will he be available?”
“Hang on.” She pushed open a door behind the counter, stuck her head into the doorway, and there was an exchange of voices. Then she closed the door. “He’s just finishing up. Another few minutes.”
Some other people had come into the shop, and Stormy turned her attention to them. I looked at the tattoo designs on the wall, and five minutes later a man’s voice said, “Sir? You wanted to talk to me?”
I turned. Buster was a skinny fiftyish guy with a half-bald head, a gray ponytail, a gold hoop in his left ear, and thick glasses. An old hippie, or maybe an easy rider—or both.
I shook hands with him, and when I did, I noticed the colorful designs tattooed on his fingers and wrists and forearms. They snaked their way up under his shirtsleeves and peeked out at the open throat of his shirt. “Stormy says you might’ve done a tattoo for a girl about a week ago. Her name is Christa, and I need to find her.”
He frowned. “I don’t remember the name.”
I showed him Christa’s picture.
He glanced at it and nodded. “Oh, okay. I do remember her. She wanted an eye.”
“An eye?” I said. “The tattoo, you mean?”
“Come on out back, I’ll show you.”
I followed him into the cramped back room where he kept his tattooing equipment. There was a padded, waist-high table and a couple of chairs. Buster and I sat in the chairs, facing each other.
He took out a sketch pad, drew quickly on it, and handed it to me. It looked like a child’s drawing of an eye—just a circle inside an eye-shaped oval with a pupil in the middle and a few abstract lines to suggest a brow and the bridge of a nose.
Princess Ishewa had mentioned an eye in the sky. Christa had an eye tattoo. Hmm. I’m a confirmed skeptic, but I couldn’t help wondering if the princess did have some kind of second sight.
“Is there some significance to this?” I said to Buster. “It looks sort of familiar.”
“It’s some kind of ancient symbol, I think. I’ve done others like it.” He shrugged. “Don’t know what it’s called. I’m an artist, man. I make pictures. People ask for something, I assume it has significance to them. They ask for it, I draw it.”
“Where did she get it done?”
“Right here.” He waved his hand around the room.
I smiled. “I meant, what part of her body.”
“Ah,” he said. “Her left hip.” He patted his own skinny hip. “Toward the back.”
“Well, as I said, I’m looking for her. No chance you might have an address or phone number or something, is there?”
He reached up to a shelf and brought down the kind of notebook that I used to take lecture notes in when I was in college. “I keep track of all my work,” he mumbled. He squinted at the page. “Here it is. Week ago yesterday. Girl said her name was Raven. No address or phone number. I always ask, but I don’t require it if they pay cash.”
“Raven?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t ask for her identification. She looked plenty old enough. Mid-twenties, I’d guess. I just ask their name so we can talk. She said it was Raven.”
“But you’re sure it’s this girl.” I pointed at Christa’s picture.
“Oh, sure. It was her, all right. Nice kid. Nervous, though.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Most people are nervous about their first tattoo. I didn’t have the feeling that was it with her, though.”
“No?”
“No. She was with a guy. It seemed like something was going on between them.”
“Like boyfriend-girlfriend stuff?”
“Could be, but I didn’t really get that feeling. It was more like he brought her here to get this done. As if it was his idea and she was doing it for him.”
Buster closed his eyes for a minute. “Sorry.” He shook his head. “I guess she might’ve said his name, but if she did, I don’t remember what it was. They didn’t talk much. He came back here while I did her. Had to see the whole thing.”
“You let people do that?”
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “So she paid cash?”
“Yes. Actually, he did. The guy paid for it. Sixty bucks. That’s cheap for a tattoo. This eye. Just a few lines. About as easy as it gets.”
“I was hoping you might have a credit-card receipt.”
“Sorry.”
“You said you’ve done some of these eye tattoos before?”
“Up until this summer, I don’t believe I did more than one or two in my whole career. Lately there’s been a little run on ’em, for some reason. I’ve done six or eight in the past two, three weeks. All on women.”
“This same eye?”
“Exactly like this one.”
“Young, attractive women?”
Buster frowned at me. “What makes you say that?”
I shrugged. “Just wondering.”
“Well, now that I think about it, I’d guess that would be right. Young, attractive women. All on the left hip. Some new fad, I guess.”
As I walked back to where I’d parked J.W.’s car down by the ferry landing, I realized that I’d better try to learn the significance of eye tattoos on the left hips of attractive young women.
I sat in the car for a few minutes with the sea breeze blowing through the windows. I’d taken Buster’s sketch of Christa’s eye tattoo with me. I took it out of my shirt pocket and looked at it. It looked back at me. No words were exchanged.
In about two minutes my mood swung from elated to discouraged. All I’d really learned was that Christa had, indeed, been here on the Vineyard a week ago, and if Alyssa Romano was to be believed, I already knew that. The fact that she was wearing a small tattoo on a part of her anatomy that would not normally be exposed meant something, I supposed. But it didn’t bring me any closer to finding her.
I was thinking maybe I should go hang around the beaches and ogle all the attractive young women wearing bikinis. I should look closely at their, um, hips, and see if an eye was looking back at me. If anyone asked me what I thought I was doing, I’d just say it was lawyer business.
A lawyer getting paid to ogle young women in bikinis? Who wouldn’t buy that story?
I looked at my watch. It was a little after three o’clock. That gave me a few hours before martini time on the Jackson balcony—plenty of time to drive around the island and remind myself of the lay of the land. I figured I’d follow the road that skirted the salt ponds on the south side through Edgartown and on out to Chilmark, take a swing around the westernmost tip of the island at Gay Head, then back around the north side through West Tisbury and Tisbury, and complete my circle at the Jacksons’ abode.
Call it reconnaissance. If anything struck me as a likely Christa clue, I’d make a note to go back on Tuesday when I had more time to check it out.
Also call it decompression. I hadn’t done much relaxing in the past few days. A leisurely summer-afternoon drive around a beautiful island with nobody talking to me, maybe some classical music or quiet jazz or even some good ol’ rock and roll on the radio—that’s what I needed.
I was on the Edgartown Road in Tisbury heading south when the blue light started flashing in my rearview window.
Chapter Eleven
J.W.
Early the next morning, I phoned the Carberg house hoping that Hale Drummand would be home. No one answered. I’d barely hung up when Jack Spitz finally returned my call of the previous evening
“So much for my ASAP message on your machine,” I groused. “I thought you government types were supposed to be servants of us civilians. Some servant.”
“I had to go down to Washington,” he explained. “I just got back. What’s up?”
I told him about Drummand’s disappearance and about finding the site from which someone had been watching the Carberg house.
He became immediately serious. “I’ll get out to the house and have a look at things. Are the woman and child safe?”
I told him where they were.
“Good,” he said. “I remember meeting Professor Skye and his family. They’re good people. Try to keep Mrs. Price and the girl with them until we find out what’s going on.”
“I’m going to see them this morning after breakfast. Then I’ll meet you at the Carberg house and show you where I found the soda can and cigarette butts. Maybe your lab guys can learn something from them.”
“It would be nice to find Drummand while we’re at it.”
“Yes, it would.” I hung up.
In the kitchen Zee and the kids were digging into blueberry pancakes, and Brady was drinking coffee.
“If you have hopes of sharing these, you’d better sit down and start eating,” said Zee, pouring maple syrup over her stack of cakes.
That seemed like good advice, so I followed it. While I ate I announced my plans for the day and got Brady’s outline of his.
“We can then exchange gleaned wisdom over cocktails this evening,” he concluded.
I gave him an admiring look. “You’re the only person I can ever remember saying ‘gleaned.’ Is that lawyer talk?”
“Lawspeak 101. I aced it.” He smiled modestly.
Zee got up and put her dishes in the sink. “Two half-wits usually make one whole wit, but I’m not sure it adds up that high in this case. Well, I’m off to work. I’ll drop the kids at camp on my way.”
“Ma.”
“What, Diana?”
“Can we go to the beach instead?”
“Not today. Your dad and I and Brady all have to work.”
“Rats.”
“Double rats,” agreed Joshua.
But the rats gave me an idea.
After Zee and the children left, Brady, a prodigious coffee drinker, finished a final cup and stood up. “Normally I’d stay here and help do the dishes, but I’m a busy man with places to go, things to do, and people to see. You know what I mean?”
I feigned disgust. “I know lawyers are like cops: You can never find one when you need one but they surround you when you don’t.”
“I’ll see you tonight.” He grinned and breezed out the door.
I often point out to Zee that I have to do everything, and here was more proof. But I couldn’t really complain because of our house rule that the person who cooks doesn’t have to clean up afterward as long as the food is good, and blueberry pancakes are very good indeed. I did some thinking while I washed and stacked the dishes, then got into the snappy white Explorer and drove to the Skyes’ farm.
There, everyone was at breakfast except the twins, who were at that age when rising early never happens unless a ride is leaving for the ski slopes or the beach. I accepted another cup of coffee. If I drank much more of the stuff I’d probably qualify for law school.
“While you’re all here in one spot,” I began, “I want to make a suggestion. If I was in any position to make it an order, I would.”
“You people who don’t take orders very well are always anxious to give them,” said John, chewing a piece of toast. “What exactly do you have in mind?”
I told them about my conversation with Jake Spitz then said, “What I’d like to have happen is for Ethel and Janie to stay here for another day. They’ll be safe from prying eyes and I’ll be free to work with Jake and try and find out what’s going on.”
“Oh, no,” said Evangeline, shaking her head. “We couldn’t do that. It was asking too much for John and Mattie to put us up last night. We’ll go back to the house.”
“Of course they can stay with us!” said Mattie. Then she turned to Evangeline. “It’s nice to have a grown-up woman to talk to, and you’ll be doing my daughters the biggest favor they could ever imagine. One night with you in the sam
e house was almost heaven. Another one will be paradise! Do stay.”
“In another day or so you should be able to go back to your own house,” I said. “Meanwhile, I thought you might all go over to East Beach for the day. There won’t be any celebs or reporters there, so you can swim and relax like normal human beings.” I pointed a finger at rosy Janie. “Except you, of course. You should stay under an umbrella with a lot of sunscreen on.”
“Mom, do I have to stay under an umbrella?”
“Well, maybe not all the time.”
“If you want company,” I said to Janie, “Joshua and Diana are dying to go to the beach.”
“Yes!” Janie looked pleased. She was a child who, I suspected, spent a lot of time with adults and was happy at the thought of spending some with people her own age.
“Plenty of room in the Jeep for everybody,” said John.
I looked at Evangeline. “Did you pack your bathing suits in those overnight bags?”
She smiled the smile that had caused many a young man’s heart to throb. “Amazing, but true. Maybe I have the sight.”
“If John wasn’t such a prude you could probably all swim in the buff, but professors are notorious puritans.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Mattie, theatrically ogling her husband then popping a last bite of sausage into her mouth. “Stop at your kids’ camp and tell them we’ll be coming by for Diana and Joshua. We’ll pick up their swimsuits at your place on the way to Chappy and we’ll have the cell phone so you can get in touch if you have to.”
I rose from my chair. “I’ll come by before supper and let you know what’s going on, if I get it figured out by then.”
Evangeline touched my arm. “I’m worried about Hale.”
“Don’t let it ruin your day. There’s probably a pretty simple explanation for him not showing up. He may be back at the house right now, talking with Jake Spitz.”
“I hope so.”
I hoped so, too, but I doubted it.
I drove to the Carberg house. Spitz was inside. A small pair of binoculars hung around his neck. Hale Drummand was not in sight.
“How many keys are there to this place?” I asked.
“Three that I know of. One for Drummand, one for Mrs. Price, and one for me. I’ve been through the house and garage and there’s no sign of anything unusual having happened.”
Second Sight Page 11