Deadout (10 page)

“Hey, everyone,” Nola said as we found our seats. “This is Doyle.”

A few of them looked up or waved. A few mumbled some kind of greeting. I mumbled one back.

As we sat, Nola introduced me to the woman with the braid. “Doyle, this is Gwen.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said, giving my hand a firm shake.

“You, too.”

“Gwen and I worked together this afternoon,” Nola explained. “She showed me the ropes.”

Gwen laughed. “I think I learned more from you,” she protested.

Nola laughed, too. “Oh, please,” she said. “Using two Q-Tips was brilliant. I'd never seen anyone—”

And they're off,
I thought, my ears glazing over as they dove deeper and deeper into the minutiae.

Teddy was in the middle of a war story about some protest he'd been on, getting locked up for a cause. The women on either side of him were hanging on every word. I thought about the poor cops who'd had to deal with him.

He didn't turn his head as we sat, but a couple of seconds later, his eyes hit me and stayed on me. Nola was dishing up salad and chatting with Gwen.

As Teddy stared at me, I gave him the stupidest, friendliest smile I could muster. He looked away, but I don't think he was buying it, at least not the friendly part.

The meal was simple but tasty. I hadn't realized how hungry I was. As we ate, the farmers traded stories about their day. The main topics were adorable tales about Paula, Georgia, Ringo, and John—the chickens—and tips on different techniques learned during the first day of hand-pollinating the crops.

All the farming talk gave me plenty of time to partake of my newest hobby: trying to figure out what was up with Teddy Renfrew.

Toward the end of the meal, Teddy pushed himself from the table, drawing everyone's attention like he was going to make a speech, but he just said, “I'll be back in a moment.”

A few minutes later, he appeared at my elbow, placing a bottle of wine on the table in front of me.

“This round's on me,” he said to a smattering of cheers and clapping, placing a second bottle at the other end of the table. Half an hour later, a few people had left, but the ones who remained were getting louder to make up for it.

Teddy seemed as caught up in the buzz as everyone else, but I noticed he kept checking his watch, and as the motion grew more frequent, it was followed by a glance at me. I'm a trained surveillance professional and I can be pretty sneaky, but I figured I'd better put his mind at ease. I yawned and stretched and put my hand on Nola's back as I got up. She turned and looked up at me.

“I'm going to head in,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, her eyes sweeping my face.

I smiled and then she did, too.

“I'm going to hang out for a while.”

“Of course,” I said. “I'm just beat.”

As Gwen and I said our goodnights, I snuck a glance at Teddy sneaking a glance at me. He looked relieved to see me going, a reaction I am not unfamiliar with.

The cabin was less than twenty feet away, but I had to put my hands out in front of me to feel for the porch post in the darkness. I turned the light on when I got inside, and then immediately turned it off.

I took off my boots in the darkness, then sidled up to the window so I could see the tables in the commons. I had to get pretty close in order to see Teddy. Sure enough, a couple minutes later, he stood, stretching in that same fake way I had done, and said his goodnights. I backed away from the window, waiting for him to pass. Then I stepped up and watched him walking up toward the big house. When I lost the angle, I opened the front door a crack, watching through the gap.

I could just make him out. Halfway to the big house, he looked over his shoulder. Then he stopped and turned, and headed off to the right, toward the compost piles and the tree line.

I stepped silently out onto the porch; then I looked down at my bare feet, stark white in the darkness. I'm not a barefoot-in-the-park kind of guy, but I figured it would help keep the noise down.

The porch floor felt smooth and cool as I padded across it, but when I stepped off, the ground was cold and damp, a mixture of grass and dirt and dew. Probably some bugs, too.

I crept through the gap between the two cabins, and stopped at the rear, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. The moonlight seemed brighter back here, and I could see Teddy's silvery outline making its way toward the trees. When he disappeared behind the compost pile at the end, I crept forward to the space between the two in the middle. At first, I couldn't find him, and I was concerned that maybe he was headed back already. But then I saw a red glint through the trees.

I moved my head and got a better angle on it. It was the taillight of a car. I could see Teddy's outline moving toward it, disappearing and reappearing as he made his way through the trees. By the time he stopped, he was mostly obscured by the trees, partially outlined in red as he stood behind the car. For a moment, there was another light, the dim yellow of a dome light. Then it winked out. A few seconds later, a another figure appeared in the shallow pool of red light.

They stood there for a few seconds. Then they both disappeared. The dome light winked on, as I heard the car door close, and it winked off. The red light drifted off to the right before disappearing completely.

I turned to head back, but the moon had slipped back behind the clouds and the ground was transformed into a pit of blackness. I stepped forward and my foot landed on something wet and squishy, probably half-rotted garbage that had tumbled off the pile. The next step was good, but then the third step landed on what felt like a punji stick. I was convinced that if there was any light, I would see it protruding from the top of my foot. As I took a moment to catch my breath and bite my lip so I didn't curse out loud, I was rewarded with a soft wash of yellow light illuminating my way back. I hopped as quickly as I could back to the cabin, stopping only when I realized the source of the light.

Lights on in the cabin meant Nola was back. Probably wondering what I was up to. Creeping around the front of the cabin, I noticed everyone was gone except the skinny guy and the object of his affection.

When I got inside, Nola was lying in bed, reading. She looked at me over the book, up and down, lingering on my feet, then on my face.

“I went for a walk,” I said.

She looked back down at my feet to let me know she didn't believe me. “Nice night for it.”

Then she closed the book and rolled far enough away from me that even in the tiny bed there would be plenty of space between us.

 

17

Nola was gone when I woke up, and so was everyone else. It was only eight, but the sun was up and the morning was warm. I went outside in jeans and a T-shirt. No shoes, just to prove a point, and maybe to toughen up my feet a bit, since apparently they needed it.

It was Sunday morning. If there had been a communal breakfast, I had missed it. What I really missed was coffee.

I walked down to one of the trails at the far end of the commons. The fields spread out below on a gentle slope, rows of scrubby bushes covered with white blossoms, a few young farmers hard at work, dabbing little brushes in each little blossom. It looked like they were dusting for fingerprints.

I spotted Nola at the far end of the field. She might have seen me, but she didn't look up, so I didn't wave. Besides, she was at work.

Back in the cabin, I put on my boots and grabbed the car keys. I needed a coffee.

I half expected the Buick to still be parked in front of the driveway, but it wasn't. It was a hundred yards down the road, facing back toward the driveway. I slowed as I passed it, sharing a look with the two suits inside.

They scowled, but it wasn't like they were trying to be discreet. I tapped my forehead in a salute; then I tapped the accelerator and sped off.

*   *   *

I was starting to get my bearings on the island, and I drove into Oak Bluffs without looking at the map. I ended up at Mocha Mott's and ran into Moose, sitting at a table with Benjy and Pete. They each had a bagel and a coffee. A map and a bunch of papers were spread out in front of them. Moose and Benjy looked like they'd been up for a while. Pete didn't look much better. Moose did a double take when I walked in.

“You're still here?” he said.

“For the moment. Why?”

“Are you busy?”

I shrugged. “I have plans to get a cup of coffee, but I'm open after that. Why?”

“I need you to help move some of the bee stations. Can you give us a couple of hours?”

Benjy and Pete looked up for the first time, as if they had both just noticed me.

“Um…” That wasn't how I had planned on spending my morning, but I hadn't planned anything else, either. “Sure, I guess.”

I got a large coffee with a double shot of espresso. It seemed like that kind of morning.

*   *   *

“I thought you were leaving this morning,” Moose said, driving at a decent clip. “When are you here until?”

“I don't know. I have the next couple of days off, but it might be good to have some home-alone time. Besides, I'm not sure Nola likes the idea of me being here.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “Seriously? I'm sure that's not the case.”

“You think?”

“No, she's crazy about you. She told me so.”

I didn't ask when, but I had a feeling it might not have been recently. “So what's going on with you? You looked like crap yesterday, you look worse today. And your friends have the same look.”

He shook his head, gave me a look so scared it scared me, too. “You can't tell anyone, okay? Not yet.”

“I don't know anyone up here, and I don't talk to anyone anyway.”

He nodded and took a deep breath, his face going pale. “It's the bees, man. Something very messed up is going on.”

“What's wrong with them?”

He turned and gave me a look like stone. “They're all dying.”

“What do you mean?”

“For weeks we've been tracking them, how many there are and where they're going. Or we were. From the first day of spring, something was up. They emerged from the winter, and then their numbers started dropping, almost immediately. In the last few days, it's been dramatic, like ninety percent declines. It started up island, first the stations in Aquinnah and Menemsha, then Chilmark and West Tisbury, too. Now it's almost the whole island. We thought there was an equipment malfunction, but we're pretty sure the equipment is fine. That's why we're resetting it all, so we can check it one last time.”

“So, shouldn't you be telling someone? Why are you keeping it secret?”

“Because this is huge. We have to be totally sure, and then … I don't know, I guess folks are going to have to figure out the right way to tell people, because they are going to freak the fuck out.” He shook his head. “And I'm going to be right there with them.”

We worked in silence for the next few hours, covering one half of the island while Benjy and Pete covered the other half. We moved each station, just a few feet, then Moose switched out the hard drives and we reset them: turn the server off, disconnect the power source, wait a full minute, hold down the power switch, then reconnect it, and power up. Each time he pulled out the hard drive, he'd stare at it, as if by looking at it he could figure out what was on it.

When we were done, he drove me back to the coffee shop to pick up the Jeep.

“All right,” he said as he pulled over. “I've got to drop these off at the lab. Then we're going to meet up at the Black Dog in Vineyard Haven for brunch.”

I looked at my watch. “It's three o'clock.”

He smiled, first time all day. “Yeah, Black Dog brunch is until four. And it's awesome. Everybody goes there.”

I wasn't sure if I was up for brunch, and I didn't know what would be waiting for me back at the cabin. The suits in the Buick were gone and the campground was deserted. Inside the cabin, there was a note on the bed: “Finished early. Gone to brunch. See you later.”

 

18

I'd always suspected the Black Dog existed only as a trademarked logo, but there it was, right on the water in Vineyard Haven, next to where the ferry had let us off. An honest-to-God place.

The parking spaces out front were full, so I parked in the lot across the street. Apparently, late brunch was a big deal around here.

The place had a vaguely rustic feel, done up in exposed wood, like the Alehouse, but instead of some of the nautical tchotchkes, it had windows all the way around.

As soon as I walked in, I saw Nola sitting with her coworkers at a large row of tables pushed together. She had her back to the door, and was sitting across from Teddy, who was once again in the center, talking. He looked up when I walked in, and I gave him a little nod, but he just kept talking.

The room was loud, festive but with a frantic edge to it. Dawson and Tyrique, Johnny Blue's bodyguards, were sitting in the corner with proportionately massive piles of food in front of them. They seemed to be watching Teddy, then Tyrique saw me and said something to Dawson, who turned to look in my direction. I wondered if there was going to be trouble, but they went back to their food.

I hadn't seen the Buick out front, but the two suits were there, too. It felt like a reunion from the Alehouse. I hoped it wasn't going to turn into a reenactment.

Pete was at a table with four other guys. I nodded to him and he nodded back, but the whole table seemed to be watching me warily.

Moose was sitting with Benjy in the other dining room. He waved me over and pointed to the two empty seats next to him. I held up a finger and headed over to Nola's table.

As I approached, Teddy looked up again. This time Nola turned around.

“Doyle!” she said with a slight smile. She stood and gave me a peck on the cheek. “You remember everyone, right?”