Shooting At Loons Part 20

The violent death of a woman this prominent was let's-go-live news in this area, of course, and if they hurried, they might even slide in a bulletin before the six o'clock report ended, so the first wave of questions was quick and dirty; and by the time they were ready for greater in-depth "details-at-eleven" interviews, Quig Smith had sent someone to escort us behind the yellow tape barrier.

The dinghy returned to the dock and the officer who'd searched the Rainmaker reported that he'd found no guns. Another had found Linville's gun case, but all the slots were filled and none of the weapons seemed to have been fired that day.

Smith announced we were both free to go and Lev said, "Come with me, Red? I can bring you back for your car after the feeding frenzy's over."

"Thanks, Lev, but I really think I'd rather run the gauntlet and go on back to Harkers Island."

He studied my face a long moment, then his own face cleared. With an air of relief (and surprise at that relief?), Lev gently touched the scratch on my cheek. "Take care of yourself, Red."

"You, too, kid."

Then he was gone and I tackled Smith myself. "Are these two murders connected?" I asked.

"I don't know," he told me candidly. "One thing though. No exit wound, so the bullet's probably still inside her. We should know by tomorrow night if it's the same gun or not."

While he was talking to the reporters, I managed to slip away with only minimum attention.

Linville's house was on the north side of the point, on North River; Chet and Barbara Jean were on the south side, on Taylors Creek; but their driveways were less than a quarter-mile apart, on opposite sides of Lennoxville Road.

Impulsively, I pulled into the Winberry drive, wound through the tall shrubs and live oaks that s.h.i.+elded them from public view and circled up to the front door.

"Deborah! What a nice surprise," said Barbara Jean when she answered the bell. There were tired circles under her eyes, but her smile was warm. "Chet said you were going home today."

"I was, but then Roger Longmire told 'em I could stay another week."

"Great. I just made a fresh pitcher of tea. Come on out to the porch and join me."

We went through the house to a sunny south-facing terrace that wasn't much smaller than Linville Pope's. Half of Barbara Jean's was covered, though; and where the porch roof ended, trellises of weathered cypress continued across the bricked terrace to provide filtered shade in the summertime.

"Oh, Lordy!" I breathed. The beauty was almost enough to ease the horror of finding Linville's body.

Barbara Jean's face lit up. "Don't you love this time of year?" she said.

Her azaleas had taken salty blasts from last month's bad storm and the leaves still showed large patches of brown although the white, pink and lavender blossoms gamely tried to cover; but her wisteria was drop-dead gorgeous. The thick ropy vines that covered the trellises were in full bloom and dripped with huge heavy cl.u.s.ters of purple blossoms that mingled with the cool salt air and late afternoon suns.h.i.+ne to fill the porch with a bewitching fragrance. Off to one side, an eclectic mixture of Adirondack and wicker chairs circled a wide low table and I sank down into one of them and breathed in deeply.

"How can you bear to go off to work every day and leave this?"

"Sometimes I don't," she confided. "I've been playing hooky all afternoon. Chet's off fis.h.i.+ng somewhere so I borrowed a friend's runabout and got out on the water myself for an hour or two. I just needed some time alone for a change."

"I'm sorry I disturbed you then."

"No, no, I was ready for company."

I was overflowing about Linville but waited till she had poured me a gla.s.s of tea and a.s.sured herself that I had everything in the way of lemon, sugar, napkins, or cookies that a guest could want before I told her.

"Shot? On her own pier?"

She listened in total silence until I finished, then slowly shook her head. "Oh, s.h.i.+t, Deborah!" The embarra.s.sed expression on her face was that of someone caught in a lapse of good taste. "G.o.d forgive me, you know what my first thought was?"

"That now that boat storage facility next to Jill won't be built?"

Barbara Jean gave a bleak smile. "I didn't know I could be this unchristian, this callous."

"It's not being callous. You guys weren't exactly best friends, she wanted Neville Fishery and she was threatening the peace and quiet of your daughter's home. It's only human to be relieved that those things will go on hold now."

She sighed and started asking for more details: when exactly did Quig Smith think she'd been killed? Had there been any witness?

"Midge? Midge was there?"

"Evidently he's been back a couple of weeks, holed up in his rooms, drinking steadily. He says he was standing in the sunroom and saw it happen. That someone out in a boat aimed a shoulder gun at Linville while she was down on the dock, but he was so drunk at the time, Smith's not sure he's a credible witness. I'm surprised you didn't hear the rescue truck's siren."

"No, I was-no, I didn't."

She set down her gla.s.s of iced tea and headed for the wet bar just inside the door. "I need something stiffer. Fix one for you?"

"No, thank you," I said, but I did stir an extra spoon of sugar into my tea.

When she returned, she carried an old-fas.h.i.+oned gla.s.s with two inches of something amber over a couple of ice cubes.

"Is that Chet coming in?" I asked, as a boat slowly peeled off from the channel.

We took our gla.s.ses and went down to meet him at the landing. As with most people who live on the water, he had cut his motor at the precise instant needed to lift it before the propeller blades sc.r.a.ped bottom, yet still had the momentum to carry him in to his dock.

Before he could even throw her a line, Barbara Jean began to tell him about Linville Pope's murder and made me finish.

"What?" Chet stood in the boat to listen before handing out a bucket of fish and getting out himself with a couple of rods. He was still walking stiffly from his pulled muscle and he shook his head. "My G.o.d, Deb'rah. You really stepped in the middle of it this week, didn't you, girl?"

Back at the house, he dumped the three fish he'd caught into a chest of ice-"Not much to show for a whole afternoon"-rinsed off his hands and took the drink Barbara Jean had fixed him.

"Poor Linville," he said. "And poor Midge. Half his problem is that he could never give her what she wanted."

"She wanted to be Queen of Beaufort," Barbara Jean said sharply. "Let's not forget that."

"De mortuis, honey."

"I'm not speaking ill of the dead," she argued. "Only the truth. She wanted to close Neville Fishery. She never knew what it was like before. No sense of history, no-"

She turned to me abruptly. "Did you ever hear them singing on the water, Deborah?"

"The chanteymen? No. I have one of the tapes though, and I can imagine how it must have sounded."

"You can't!" she said pa.s.sionately, and I don't think it was the bourbon speaking. "When I was a little girl, we still had one boat that didn't have a power block, and my daddy used to let me go out with them once in a while. They'd let down the two little purse boats to circle a school of menhaden and the men had to pull the heavy nets by hand. That's why they sang those long slow chanties, to synchronize the hardening of the fish against the main boat. And the sound of those black voices floating across the water from one boat to the other-the leader would sing out the first words and the men would heave away as they echoed the strong slow beats-I'll never hear anything as beautiful again in my life."

Tears spilled from her eyes.

"Ah, honey," said Chet, taking her in his arms and patting her tenderly on the back.

"And that's what Linville Pope wanted to destroy."

"I thought the chanteymen were replaced by hydraulic net-pullers twenty years ago," I said, remembering how Linville had taunted her on that point. "She didn't have anything to do with that, did she?"

"But some of their sons still work for me. They link back into that heritage and continue the work their fathers did and she would have destroyed that link. And taken something precious from me as well."

She laid her head on Chet's shoulder. "I didn't wish Linville Pope dead, Deborah, but I can't say I'm sorry that I don't have to keep fighting her off."

I had to admit that given Linville's persistent techniques, there might well be a lot of similar feelings all around this part of Carteret County when the news got out.

Chet and Barbara Jean invited me to stay for supper, but it was getting too heavy for me.

"Sorry," I told them, "but I've got a bunch of reading to do and I'd better get to it."

"Andy's papers?" asked Barbara Jean.

"Papers?" said Chet.

"I told you about them this morning," she said. "That research Andy was doing on Pope Properties."

"Oh yeah. Find anything yet, Deborah?"

"Haven't had a chance. And I probably won't recognize it if it's there."

"Maybe you should let me take a look. I know most of the players. By name, anyhow, if not by person."

"If I don't spot anything tonight, maybe I will," I said.

"Why waste your time?" asked Barbara Jean. "Linville's dead now, remember? n.o.body needs that ammunition anymore."

a a a It was heading for twilight when I stopped at a store on the outskirts of town and picked up several sets of cheap underwear and two packages of panty-hose. If I was going to stay over another week, I'd have to find a laundromat, but not tomorrow, thank you. I planned to sleep in and then spend the day skimming through Andy Bynum's papers.

a a a The smell of steamed shrimp hit my nose the instant I walked into the cottage. Indeed, I walked in through a door that was not only unlocked, but which could no longer be secured at all except by a padlock that I hadn't bothered with since I got to the island. Someone seemed to have put a foot against the door and shoved hard enough to tear the dead bolt right off the old brittle door casing.

"Good," said Kidd Chapin from somewhere in the dim interior. "You're back. I was beginning to think I'd have to spend the whole evening in darkness."

"So now the Wildlife Commission's into breaking and entering?"

"Believe it or not, it was like that when I got here about forty-five minutes ago. Everything was tossed, but you'll have to check it out to see what's missing. The TV's still here and the lock's intact on the pump house. This got anything to do with those files in your newspapers?"

"How the heck did you find them?" I asked, yanking down the shades so I could turn on the lights and see his expression when I threw him out.

He did have an embarra.s.sed look on his thin homely face. "Well, when I came past and saw the lock was smashed, there was a bucket with some shrimp in it right by the door and you know you can't leave shrimp out too long. I couldn't head and sh.e.l.l them outside, so I grabbed up some of those newspapers and spread 'em over the table and out dropped a bunch of Xeroxes. You ever read The Purloined Letter?"

I had to laugh. "What did you do with the shrimp after you cleaned them?"

"I saved you some," he said virtuously. Then, in an abrupt change, he said, "I was in Quig's office when you called about the Pope woman. You okay?"

I nodded.

"Hey," he said gently. "Your face seems to be healing nicely." Then he took a closer look. "Better take the makeup off though and let it breathe."

Shaking my head, I went and changed into jeans, washed my face, put peroxide on my scratches, then called Telford Hudpeth and thanked him for the shrimp. "You didn't happen to notice anything about the front door here, did you?" I asked.

"No, ma'am. Why? Something wrong with it?"

"Someone broke in while I was gone. They didn't take anything, but I was just wondering if you saw them."

"Sure didn't, but all I did was set the bucket down and leave. If you don't have a way to lock your door, I can bring some tools and maybe scare up a new lock and-"

"That's okay," I said. "Thanks anyhow, but there's a padlock and a hasp I can still use."

"You're sure now?"

"I'm positive," I said firmly.

Kidd had blatantly eavesdropped on the whole conversation and he was smiling broadly. "More cavalry to the rescue, Ms. Judge?"

"Don't you have a home?" I asked.

He handed me a stainless steel bowl with all the shrimp offal. "You'd better get rid of this before it starts to smell."

I took the bowl without arguing, but only because I had ulterior motives. "Don't wait up," I said and stepped out on the porch in time to see Mickey Mantle go sailing by in his pickup, headed for the road.

Luckily, all I have to do is judge 'em; I don't have to catch 'em.

a a a Mahlon and Guthrie were out working on the trawler as I dumped the shrimp heads and sh.e.l.ls for the minnows and crabs to feed on. Back into the water from whence they came, I told myself. Ashes to ashes, sea to the sea.

Guthrie called a greeting and I didn't need a second invitation to walk over and see what they were up to.

They had almost finished getting all the juniper strips on the hull and the bow was an elegant flare that would soon be sanded smooth to receive its first coat of paint. The cabin was nearly ready for fitting out, but tonight their attention seemed centered on a large greasy piece of machinery that sat beside the boat on concrete blocks.

"Hey, you got your engine!" I said. "Andy's boys?"

"Yeah," Mahlon grunted as he secured a heavy chain around the thing.

"Drew and Maxton brought it just a little while ago," said Guthrie, with a face-splitting grin. "They were there when Andy first promised Grandpap, and they said they wouldn't go back on his word."

A trestle had been rigged over the open hole in the deck and now they were waiting for Mickey Mantle, who'd gone off somewhere to borrow a block and tackle so they could hoist the engine into place tonight.

In all the years that I'd been coming down, I'd never seen Mahlon work this steadily in one sustained effort. It was almost as if he believed that getting this boat completed and into the water would somehow put things back the way they were before so many rules and regulations began to endanger the different freedoms that gave meaning and substance to his life.

I could have told Kidd that the reason he hadn't caught Mahlon shooting at loons was because he was too busy shooting for something more important: his last chance at shaping a destiny for himself and Mickey Mantle and Guthrie, a chance for the two adults to get out from under, a chance for one more generation to live independent and unfettered.

The only fly in Guthrie's ointment that evening was worrying about how they were going to s.h.i.+ft the boat off Linville Pope's property before she served them with papers for trespa.s.sing.

"We'll do it 'fore that time comes," Mahlon said gruffly as he picked up his hammer and fitted another strip of cypress to the hull.

"Didn't you hear?" I said. "She was killed this afternoon."

Even Mahlon quit work for that. They listened intently as I described what had happened; and as with Barbara Jean, Guthrie's first reaction was purely personal. "That mean them garbage men won't be back tomorrow?" he asked.