A Deadly Vineyard Holiday (16 page)

“Do that,” I said. “Meanwhile, let's not talk over any more plans when we're in the house.” I gestured toward Debby. “For instance, let's not have Debby make any phone calls until we know the house is clean.”

She nodded and reached into her bag. As I walked away, she was already talking into her radio. I beckoned to Debby, who fell in beside me as I walked up the driveway.

“What are you doing, cousin Jeff?”

I don't always tell people the truth, so I thought for three or four steps before deciding to do it this time.

“It's possible that our house has been bugged,” I said. “It probably hasn't, but just in case it has, Karen is going to have it swept. She's calling in some agents to do it. That's why I don't want you to call Allen for a while. If there is a bug in the house, whoever is out there listening will know that he'll be coming to the clambake, and we don't want that information to get out.”

She walked beside me, then said, “But if there's a bug in the house, the people who put it there already know about the clambake, so what difference would it make if they learn about Allen?”

“Maybe it doesn't. Still, the operating principle for all this security business seems to be that the fewer people who know what's going to happen, the better. But you probably know more about that than I do.”

She nodded. “I hate it. I know it has to be done, but I really hate it! Someday I'm not going to need any security, and there won't be any secrets about my life. I'll be like normal people.”

“Not right now, though,” I said, thinking that Debby, bright and sophisticated as she was, knew little about the lives of normal people, who had no security agents surrounding them. The agents might not be there, but normal people also had secrets hidden from friends and neighbors. I knew that I, at least, had some that I kept locked within myself, and had no plans to share them. The old saw came forth from my memory: Two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.

“Here's my security system,” I said, coming to the beginning of the thread that surrounded the house. “It's high-tech stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.” I told her what it was and why it was there.

“I wouldn't have thought of it,” said Debby, “and I'm sorry you had to. I think I must be more bother to you than I imagined. I guess Karen's right. I should go back to the compound so you and Zee can live without all this trouble.”

I glanced at her and was surprised to see a tear trickle down her cheek. The sight of that tear elicited a rush of sympathy in me, and an unexpected reaction. I put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her against me for a moment before letting her go.

“Forget that stuff, kid. I'm like Sam Spade; I don't mind a little trouble. And neither does Zee. Come on. We'll follow this thread around and see if it's still in one piece. Blow your nose and we'll run a recon.”

She found a tissue, wiped her eyes, and followed me. We walked the barely visible circle of thread. For the first fifty yards it was intact. Then we came to a broken spot.

I held up a hand, and we both stopped.

Between the trees, scrub oaks, and brambles, the ground was covered with leaves, twigs and branches, and browned needles from evergreen trees.

I studied the ground, then knelt and studied it more closely.

“What is it?” whispered Debby. “Can you see any footprints?”

I brushed away a leaf and pointed at the fresh hoof-print.

“Bambi.”

“A deer!” Her whisper was gone. She smiled.

I stood up and retied the broken thread. “There are hundreds of them here on the island, but most people never see them. Hunters do well during the hunting season, and some poachers do well all year round.”

“Do you hunt?”

“Not as much as I used to. But I like venison when I can get it.”

“I think it's cruel to hunt animals.”

“We all kill something in order to stay alive. Fish, animals, plants, whatever. Only the carrion-eaters live on things they find already dead. Maybe you'd rather do that.”

“Yuck!”

“Yuck it is. Come on. This deer went in this way, but he went out another way, so we're going to find another hole in this fence somewhere or other.”

But the next break in the thread wasn't caused by the deer. Some person had come walking from the north, had passed through the thread, and had moved in toward the house. I touched my lips with my finger, and gestured to Debby to kneel down.

Shadow had come. But had he gone? I put my mouth close to Debby's ear. “Go back the way we came. Stay low and don't make any noise. When you get to the driveway, wait. I'll call you.”

She nodded, her eyes wide behind her big glasses, then turned and moved swiftly back through the trees. I inwardly thanked the someone who had taught her that it was sometimes wise not to argue.

When she was out of sight, I moved toward the house, following the disturbed leaves that marked Shadow's path, keeping low, moving slowly, looking ahead, pausing to look side to side, then moving ahead again, hoping to see before I was seen.

Hawkeye could no doubt have told to the minute when Shadow had passed here, and would have known his weight and height and maybe even the color of his eyes; but I wasn't Hawkeye, nor much of a reader of country signs. All I knew was that someone had come down through the trees from the north, had broken my thread fence, and had gone on toward my house. I went after him.

I came to a spot where I could see the shed behind the house. On its rear wall was the cutting table where I filleted my fish, and beside it the smoker I'd made of parts found in the Edgartown dump in the old days before the environmentalists seized control of it, when
it was still the Big D, where you could often find just what you needed and there was an absolute money-back guarantee if you changed your mind, and you didn't need a passport and visa to get in.

Shadow had apparently paused where I was now pausing, for the leafy ground was more disturbed than usual. Like me, he had taken stock of what lay ahead of him before moving on.

Now, I took a good look all around and saw no one, then sought the sign that would show where he had gone next.

Straight ahead. I followed right up to the shed, where the trail disappeared. Shadow had apparently walked into the yard, where my limited tracking abilities failed me. Had he come and gone while we were down in Edgartown? Or was he still here? And if so, where? In the shed?

I breathed deep, eased open the door, and took a quick peek.

Not there.

In the stockade corral, where I store valuable stuff too bulky to go in the shed? I sidled over and had a look. Not there.

That left the house itself. The doors were never locked, and I hadn't gone inside since we'd gotten home, so he could be there. I thought of the gun cabinet in the living room, and was acutely conscious of being unarmed. I went back to the shed and got a fish knife. If knives and swords were better weapons than guns, we'd still have knights in armor fighting our wars, but the knife was better than nothing. I went into the house, into the kitchen.

I heard movement in the living room and tiptoed in that direction. Karen appeared in the doorway. She
looked at the knife. The little tablet of paper that we use to write shopping lists was on the table. I touched a finger to my lips, found a pencil, and wrote:
Shadow may be here in the house. Debby's safe.

A pistol appeared in Karen's hand. One moment it wasn't there, and the next it was. Very quick.

We went through the house. Every room, every closet.

No one.

We went outside and checked the cars. No one again. We swept the surrounding woods with our eyes. No Shadow.

Karen put the pistol away. “What's going on?”

I told her.

“Where's Cricket?”

“I told her to wait up by the driveway until I called her.”

“Call her, then.”

“I'll walk up there and get her, just in case Shadow is between her and us.”

Both of us went. Debby was hunkered down like a fawn, behind some ferns under an oak tree. She came out into the driveway.

“Tell me what's going on.”

“We don't really know,” said Karen. “Somebody came down through the woods to the house and then went away again. We don't know who it was.”

“But we wanted to check things out,” I said. “Whoever it was is gone.”

“Who do you think it was?”

“We don't know,” I said. “Maybe it was just some bird-watcher who strayed from Felix Neck.”

“But you don't believe that, do you?” Debby was no fool.

“You and Karen go down to the house,” I said. “I'm going to see if our birder left again. If he did, I'm going to try to find out where he went. Stay inside until Walt Pomerlieu and his crew get here.”

Karen looked at me. “You be careful. Are you armed?”

“I don't plan on shooting anybody,” I said. “I just want to see where the guy went.”

“There are probably a couple of agents up there in the woods where they found that newspaperman,” said Karen. “Maybe they saw something.”

“If I see them, I'll ask them.”

“What newspaperman?” asked Debby.

“You may as well tell her about him,” I said to Karen.

“Yeah.” Debby looked at Karen. “Tell me about it. Nobody ever tells me anything.”

The two of them went down the driveway, and I went into the woods, again following my thread fence. I came to the spot where Shadow had gone in, and I retied the thread. Then I came to the spot where Shadow had come out. Human footprints headed north toward the wildlife sanctuary. Somewhere farther along the thread I knew I'd probably find the spot where the deer had gone on south, but the deer didn't interest me. I retied the exit break and followed Shadow's trail toward Felix Neck.

The thread had been intact when I'd checked it out this morning, but after that the house had been empty most of the day, first when we'd gone to the pistol range, then when we'd gone up to Gay Head, then when we'd gone to the clam flats, and finally when Zee had left for work and the rest of us had gone downtown. Shadow could have come anytime we'd been away.

Why had he come? To harm Debby? Had he left something behind, besides the bugs we'd found on the cars? If he had, would Pomerlieu and his people find it?

Shadow didn't leave a lot of trail, but it was enough for me to follow, thanks to my seasons of deer hunting and to the heels on his shoes, which left marks where moccasins would have left none. He wasn't Hiawatha, then, nor Chingachgook, but someone else less gifted in wilderness lore and skills, and I felt I was at least his match in the forest. I moved warily, pausing to sweep the trees and brush with my eyes as far ahead as I could, then trotting along Shadow's path.

I came to the end of my land and passed over into the wildlife sanctuary. Off to my right, between some trees, I saw the pole topped by the osprey's nest that I'd seen earlier, after Burt Phillips's body had been found. Somewhere in this area, supposedly, were the Secret Service agents Karen had mentioned, guarding against the very thing that Shadow had accomplished: an approach to my house from the north. Shadow might not be Natty Bumppo, but he was apparently more of a woodsman than Walt Pomerlieu's two agents were.

I stopped in the shadow of a tall oak and followed Shadow's path with my eyes. It led to the northwest, to the long driveway that ended at the parking lot by the Felix Neck buildings. Once it got to the drive, I was pretty sure I'd lose it, because a lot of people walk around Felix Neck admiring the flora and fauna, and I, not being Lou Wetzel, either, wouldn't be able to tell Shadow's footprints from any of the others.

But maybe one of the agents, woodsman or not, had seen something. I stood and looked, turning slowly. If I was a Secret Service agent on duty in the woods, wishing I were somewhere else, probably, where would I put myself? In the shade, certainly. Would I have insect repellent, or would I be slapping mosquitoes and other bugs? Repellent, probably. Even the Secret Service
probably knew there were insects in the woods, especially in woods near the wetlands along Sengekontacket Pond, and would have prepared for them.

I saw movement about two hundred yards away, across a clearing, beneath a pine tree. I looked harder and saw that it was a man stretching his arms, then doing leg thrusts to keep himself limber. His back seemed to be toward me most of the time. I walked that way. When I was about twenty-five yards away, he turned to face me, and I saw that it was Ted Harris.

He watched me come to him, his eyes no friendlier than usual.

“Birding?” he asked.

I nodded. “A flightless, featherless biped. Maybe you've seen it. It went down to my house from up this direction sometime today, and came back this way later.”

His lip curled. “So now you're Daniel Boone, eh? How do you know it wasn't earlier?”

It seemed clear that Ted and I were not destined to become the best of friends. We rubbed each other wrong. “I know,” I said. “The question is, what do you know? Did you see anybody go that way or come back?”

He studied me. “I report to my boss, not to you.”

“You report to whoever you want to. Right about now your boss is down at my house, sweeping it for bugs or maybe explosives my bird may have left behind before he came back up here to this sanctuary you're supposedly watching. So if you want to report to Walt Pomerlieu, he's not far away.”

He looked at his watch. “I came on duty here two hours ago. Nobody but you has come past in that time.”

Was it my turn to curl a lip? “How would you know? Or is it you that's Daniel Boone?”

A little smile flicked across his face. “Not all of us
Secret Service types have spent our lives on the mean streets. Some of us are country hicks.” He waved a hand in the direction of my house. “I watched you coming along for ten minutes, then practically had to give semaphore signals before you saw me. If anybody else came by in the last two hours, I'd have seen him.”