Death in Vineyard Waters (28 page)

Then we were back at his house and he was showing us, Zee in particular, books, sketches, photos, and maps. “You see,” he said. “Such monuments as these are actually not uncommon in America. They're to be found throughout New England, down the coast, and all along the rivers flowing into the Mississippi. There are vestiges of very early European culture in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, you name it.” He gestured with both hands. “The problem, of course, is that the sites are not being protected by the government and are done so by only a few enlightened private citizens. By the time our archeological and anthropological establishments take official note of them, which they will certainly eventually do, many of the sites will have been destroyed or otherwise lost. That will not happen here!” His eyes flashed and his smile became grim. Then the darkness left his face and he thrust a pile of photos into our hands. “I fear I'm being a wretched host. Look at these while I prepare drinks. I have whiskey and a new coffee I haven't tried. I like a strong, bitter brew, and I'm told that this new stuff should suit my fancy. What do you prefer?”

“How about both?” I said.

“Ha! Capital! Both it shall be. I'll join you. And you, my dear?”

“Coffee and booze will do very well, thanks.”

“Excellent. I'll bring sugar and cream in case this new coffee is too acidic to be drunk black.” He went off to the kitchen and soon returned with a tray laden with pot, cups and glasses. He put it down on the coffee table and fetched a bottle of whiskey. “There. Allow me to pour.” He sat down across from us and put his cup to his lips. “Strong stuff, all right. Just my style.” He grinned at us.

I poured whiskey in two glasses and gave one to Zee while
she poured coffee. The whiskey was smooth, but the coffee was bitter. Zee tasted hers, widened her eyes, and added sugar and cream. Something happened in the back of my mind, a niggling dissatisfaction. Tristan Cooper was speaking of the photos we'd been looking at. They had no artistic merit, he confessed, for the people interested in ancient monuments were amateur photographers at best, but their subjects, the monuments, were priceless and these records of them therefore of great value, since, without such evidence, skeptics too lazy to go see for themselves would never become convinced of the monuments' existence. His voice seemed timeless, as though it was singing some ancient song of love.

I watched Zee sip her coffee and sipped my own. A bitter brew. I rinsed my mouth and throat with whiskey and found myself remembering Marjorie Summerharp speaking of the merits of swimming. In my memory, her ironic voice flickered at Tristan Cooper and John Skye. Across the room from me, Cooper's present voice sang a psalm to his standing stones. His keen old eyes moved from Zee to me and back again. Zee was entranced. He was a magnificent old man, full of magic and passion. I lifted my cup to my lips, inhaled its aroma, tipped it, held it in my hand. Suddenly I was afraid.

“I've got to go to the head,” I said, getting up. “Point me at it.”

He looked at me with raven eyes, then gestured. “Certainly. There, beyond the kitchen.”

Carrying my cup, I walked past him, stumbled over a rug, and went on. Behind me, Tristan Cooper's voice spoke again to Zee. In the bathroom I poured the coffee into the toilet and rinsed the cup in the sink. Then I knelt and stuck two fingers down my throat and induced vomiting. Not enough. I repeated the operation and managed a bit more. A third effort achieved little result. Filling my cup from the faucet, I drank and then attempted more vomiting. My head was
fuzzy, so I splashed my face with cold water. I felt gloved with lead, shod with cement. I was in trouble, weak as a kitten. I drank more water, flushed the toilet for sound effect, and checked for a back door. There was one, and I looked through its window. Through the gathering darkness I could faintly see a line of white surf against South Beach. Even as I looked, it seemed that the darkness grew thicker. I shook my head and walked back into the living room.

Cooper smiled at me. Zee was blinking and had settled back into the couch where she sat. She looked content and comfortable. I lifted the coffee pot, half turned from Cooper, and pretended to pour another cup.

“Good stuff,” I said, clumsily putting the pot down. “It's got a bite, but it sort of grows on you.” I put my cup to my lips and walked around the room, pretending to look at things, until I got to where Cooper's shotgun should have been. It was gone. I swerved into a table, disturbing some books, which slid to the floor. “Sorry.” I pretended to empty my cup, then got down on my knees and fumbled with the books.

“That's all right,” said Tristan Cooper, who was suddenly at my side. He took my arm and helped me up. “Why don't you sit down with Mrs. Madieras? Make yourself comfortable.”

I didn't want to get comfortable. I was surprised to see my car keys in his hand. He must have gotten them somehow as he'd helped me to my feet. I blinked at them.

“How are you feeling?” asked Cooper, following my glance. “Oh, don't worry about these. I'll drive you home later. I don't think you want to try driving, do you? Sit down and rest a bit. That's it. Have some more coffee. You're a big fellow, and you need more than your little friend here.”

He led me to the couch and I sat down. I felt dull. I leaned forward and pushed with my hands, but didn't make it to my feet. Beside me, Zee's eyes were closed and her breathing was even. Her face had that quality of childlike innocence it assumed when she slept.

Cooper put a full cup of coffee in my hand. I lifted it to my lips but then dropped it as I attempted to set it on the coffee table. I stared up at Cooper, who stood back and watched me attentively.

“Chloral hydrate,” I said. “You've Mickey Finned us.” I put my hands behind me and pushed, but made no progress off the couch. I fell back and stared up at him. “You did the same thing to Marjorie.” My voice felt thick.

“It's quite painless,” he said. “You'll just go to sleep.”

I was thinking very slowly. “They'll find this stuff in us when they do autopsies. People will know we were here.”

“Oh, you won't be found here,” he said, his head tilted to one side as he watched me. “I'll drive you back to your place in your Landcruiser. That's where they'll find you. A double suicide, as I see it. A lovers' pact? I imagine that Mrs. Madieras got the drug from the hospital, but I really won't be able to say, in the unlikely event anyone should ask me. I'll pour more of my syrup down your throats after you're asleep. Ten grams is fatal, but I'll double the dose for you since you're a big man. How are you feeling now? Getting pretty sleepy, I imagine. Your eyelids look very heavy. You and your little friend here are too dangerous. You and poor Marjorie. I can't afford to have an exposé of Sanctuary. I need their money to protect my property from developers . . .”

His voice faded off as my eyelids dropped. I lifted them again. “You picked her up in your boat while she was swimming,” I said. My tongue felt thick.

“Yes. I told her I felt in a madcap mood. That we'd run to Nomans Land and nail some big bluefish just like in the old days. She was delighted. I plucked her right out of the water and wrapped her in a robe and gave her a hot cup of coffee. A half hour later we were well to the west and she was asleep. I simply slipped her overboard. I confess that I did not think of where the tides might carry her.” He leaned forward and studied my face. “She and I were great friends, you know. Delightful woman. Great wit. I will miss her.”

My head fell back against the couch and my eyelids dropped lower. Through my lashes I watched him studying me, his face attentive and perhaps sad. “Well, well,” he said to himself after what seemed a long time. “I do believe he's finally asleep.” He leaned forward. “Are you asleep, Mr. Jackson?” He put out a long fingered brown hand and slapped me across the cheek. My head rolled away. He pinched hard on the nerve center between my thumb and forefinger. It hurt but I did not respond. He stepped back, looked at me some more, took out my car keys and jangled them for a long minute and then went toward the front of the house where the Landcruiser was parked.

I waited until I heard the front door open and close, then got up. It was harder than I'd hoped. I bent and got Zee over my shoulder and lifted her. She was dead weight. I staggered across the room, through the kitchen, and out the back door. It was dark, but I wasn't sure whether the darkness was within me or outside of me. There was a glow of lightning off to the southwest, and I started away from the house. A bit later I heard distant, faint thunder. Behind me, I heard the Landcruiser start up.

Cooper was between us and the highway, and he had his shotgun and my truck. And he had no chloral hydrate in his system. I tripped on something and went down, with Zee's body landing heavily on top of me. I got up, got her across my shoulder again, and headed away from the house toward the beach. By now, Cooper knew we were gone. This was his land and he had hunted it in the old days with my father. He'd be coming with the gun, and I was crashing around making more noise than a herd of cows. I headed for the beach.

I fell a half dozen times and each time got up weaker. The chloral hydrate and whiskey had done a number on Zee. She was more than drunk, she was in a near coma. If I had drunk even one full cup of coffee, I'd be as unconscious as she. But memory had saved me. Extolling the virtues of swimming, Marjorie Summerharp had spoken to Tristan
Cooper at John Skye's party. “Probably cure your insomnia,” she had said. “Healthier than that chloral hydrate you take for it, certainly.”

In the Boston combat zone I'd come across Mickey-Finned victims who had downed booze laced with chloral hydrate and awakened without their wallets if they had awakened at all. The drug had a strong, pungent odor and a bitter, caustic taste. It was an effective sleeping agent in small doses but a fatal drug in large ones. I had some in me, but was still operational in a fashion, thanks to my timely memory of Marjorie and judicious vomiting in Tristan Cooper's bathroom. I was worried about Zee, though, because I didn't know how much she had drunk or what dosage Tristan had used in the coffee.

I crashed through the scrub and suddenly was on a narrow road. Somewhere behind me I heard a breaking branch. I lurched away down the road toward the sound of surf and abruptly found myself looking down at a stretch of beach whitened with breaking waves. The roar of the surf drowned out any sound that might have been behind me.

I realized that I was on the bluff where Van Dam and I had stood four days earlier looking down at the Sanctuary beach. I looked to the left, and there was the pond and the docked boats. Buoyed by a sudden hope, I staggered toward the dock, feeling as I went the first scattered drops of the rain that accompanied the rising wind.

I glanced behind me through the gathering gloom but saw nothing. Then I was on the dock. The tide was low, so the sportfisherman was no good to me, since it could not clear the partially sand-filled channel to the sea. But the shallow-drafted day sailers could make it, so I carried Zee to the first of them and awkwardly deposited her in the bow. She was breathing regularly, so I had hope that she had not received a fatal dosage of the drug. Then I got to work on the sails.

The wind was from the southwest and the channel led out
due south, so I knew I should be able to sail the boat out close hauled. Once clear of the channel I could fall away and sail through the surf parallel to the beach, east toward Edgartown, providing, of course, that I could avoid a broach in the climbing waves that approached the beach.

I had the sails up and was casting off from the dock when I glanced ashore and saw Cooper appear on the beach. He must have seen the white sails against the darkness of the storm and come running down the road. Standing on the bluff, at far range for a shotgun, he threw the gun to his shoulder and fired.

Fiberglass splintered from the combing inches from me. I tossed off the final line and snatched tiller and sheets. With her centerboard up, the boat slid sideways off toward the channel. I looked back and saw Tristan running down from the bluff. He ran like an ape, his legs bowed, his body thrust forward, his long arms swinging at his sides, the shotgun in one hand.

The boat moved slowly, as if thrice adream, and Tristan ran awkwardly but fast, cutting off the distance between us. Then we were in the channel, crabbing awkwardly toward the sea, which smashed at the channel's mouth. Another glance astern showed Tristan suddenly stopping and again lifting the gun. I heard no shot, for the surf was roaring in my ears, but above my head the aluminum boom suddenly had a hole in it. He was shooting deer slugs and had only missed because he'd been running and had fired too quickly. I ducked and turned back to the boat, for we were about to meet the surf as it pounded into the mouth of the channel.

The sandbar that lay outside the beach was all that made it possible to exit the channel. The bar broke up the waves and reduced their power, and the day sailer, lightly built though she was, was able to ride over the surf that got through, take the force of the waves on her starboard bow, then ride out those same waves as I cleared the channel, got the centerboard down, and fell away downwind toward
Edgartown. For a time we were dropping into deep troughs then rising on crests of waves coming right at our beam and threatening to swamp us. But the little day sailer was like a cork and rode right up the waves before dropping off on the other side, and slowly I was able to crawl away from the beach until at last we were in still wild but gentler waters. Slacking off the sheets, I headed east along the beach, feeling better. Looking back through the gathering night and increasingly heavy rain, however, I discovered that things were not yet resolved. A white sail was going up in the pond. Tristan Cooper was coming after us.

The two boats were the same design and I had a head start, but there were two of us and only one of him, and I far outweighed him by myself, so he should be a bit faster. I looked at the wounds in the boat. The shattered combing was only cosmetic damage, but the holed boom was a different matter. The shot had seriously weakened an already light spar, and I wasn't sure how the boom would hold under the strain of a rising wind. The damage was near the outer end of the boom, so if it broke I probably wouldn't lose the whole sail, but there was a good chance that the main would tear. In either case, Cooper would have an even greater sailing edge than he already had.