Death in Vineyard Waters (29 page)

Along the beach the surf was boiling on empty sand. South Beach runs from east to west all along the southern edge of Martha's Vineyard and is a world-class beach by any test, including the fact that no houses are built on it. Tonight, though, I wished it was Miami Beach, lined with hotels full of people who could phone the police or give us shelter from our pursuer. The first habitations fairly close to the beach were the houses and condos at Katama miles ahead, where Marjorie Summerharp had taken her last, fatal swim. I wondered if we would get that far before Cooper ran us down.

The surf would be rising with the wind and it looked bad enough now. I looked forward to where Zee lay in the bow. She was still unconscious and getting soaked and chilled. I
tied the tiller, went forward, and pulled her back to me. I moved quickly, but even so the shifting of weight threw the light boat out of balance and she turned into the wind and lost way. A gain for Cooper, but there was no help for it. I adjusted the line to the tiller and rushed forward again to dig two life preservers from the cuddy cabin in the bow. Before I was back, the boat had again lurched up into the wind, this time nearly coming completely about before I was able to bring her back on course.

I took off my shirt and put it on Zee, then got life jackets on both of us. I did not want to attempt to beach the boat, but if I had to I wanted Zee to have at least a chance of making it ashore alive. I was exhausted from my long flight to the beach and doubted if I could get both of us ashore without life jackets. I wasn't sure I could get us ashore
with
them. And if I could, then what? There were no houses and no people. If we could survive the surf, Cooper, for all his mighty years, could, too, and with his shotgun could make two lonely kills far from the sight of any man and afterward walk away unknown.

The wind was cold, but it was a following one, so it could have been worse. Sailing is chilliest when close hauled. I looked back and saw that Cooper was coming. His sail was dim in the darkening night and the rain as he sailed our wake. If it got dark enough, I thought I might be able to slip away to sea without being seen and let him sail on down the coast alone. Once he got by me, I could head west and try to make a landing behind him. For such a plan, it would be nice to have tanbark sails instead of white ones, but such was not my fortune. Anyway, with Cooper in sight, all I could do was sail straight ahead.

I put Zee's limp body amidships alongside the centerboard box and got myself opposite her, balancing the boat as well as I could to maximize her speed. I wished for the first time in my life that I actually knew something about sailboat racing. I had heard racers talk and had read analyses of
races won and lost and articles about strategies and techniques to increase speed, but not much of it had sunk in or even interested me. Now I wished I knew it all. Even the least of racing sailors could no doubt squeeze more speed out of my little boat than I was managing. I wondered if Tristan had ever done any racing. If he had, I was in even more trouble. I felt sleepy in spite of the chill of the rain and wind.

A sailboat race is not often an exciting event to watch. The boats are slow, and except when they are coming around marks or tacking, nothing seems to be happening almost all the time. So it was with this race. I was grimly aware of the irony of appearances. A watcher from the shore would have seen two small boats sailing slowly along the beach, moving comfortably before a twenty-knot following wind. There would be no way for him to know that the lazy boats, so common a sight on the Vineyard's summer waters, contained, in this case, a hound after a hare, a gunner after game.

I had time to put everything together. I thought I had failed to do it sooner because I had been distracted by the Shakespeare papers and later had been inclined to suspect people I disliked: McGregor, the Van Dams, even Helen Barstone and Bill Hooperman. I had seen through a glass darkly, but now saw face to face. Marjorie had told me how she and Tristan had liked to fish from his boat long ago and had told both me and him she'd not mind going with him again, so when he showed up that morning she was an easy victim. Tristan's powerboat, for which he surely still had keys, was moored in the pond off South Beach, and he'd had no problem getting down there, taking it out, and bringing it back long before any of the Sanctuary crew was even up and about. And even if he had been seen coming back in, he could tell a satisfactory tale of having gone fishing off Nomans Land. Marjorie had threatened, however idly, to write an exposé of Sanctuary, and Tristan, fearing he might lose his precious stones if Sanctuary should be forced by
scandal to close its doors, decided to kill her—motive. He also had the means—chloral hydrate. Marjorie had chided him about his use of it, in fact. He also knew of Marjorie's morning swims and had been told where she took them—opportunity. I had been pretty slow.

And then I had told him enough to make him think that I knew more than I actually did, and he had seen me, too, as a danger. And, worse yet, I had inadvertently made him think that the “young woman” who had observed the Sanctuary sexploits and told me about them was Zee, when in fact it was Helen Barstone. Poor Zee, unconscious and being hunted down because of a mistaken identity. Because of me. I felt stupidly guilty.

On the other hand, if I'd mentioned Helen's name to Tristan, Helen might now be dead. Zee, at least, was still alive, no great thanks to me. I meant to keep her that way.

“Wake up,” I said to Zee. But of course she didn't. It takes several hours for a Mickey Finn to wear off. If she ever did wake up, she'd have a headache but would otherwise be fine. If Tristan caught us, she would never wake up at all.

18

I looked over the stern and could still see Tristan's sail leaning in the wind, a pale ghost in the darkness of night and storm. I thought he seemed closer. I brought my eyes back to my own boat and sailed on.

Suddenly there was a noisy flapping and snapping, and I woke up to find the boat turning into the wind, her sails crackling as they emptied. Dull-minded and angry, I yanked back on the tiller I'd allowed to escape me and the boat
banged around back on course. But I had lost momentum, and now Tristan's dim sail was even closer. I slapped myself hard and tried to shake the swamp from my brain. I could not allow myself to sleep.

I climbed out of the cockpit and sat in the combing where the wind would hit me harder, keep me colder, and perhaps keep me awake. I was also a better target for Tristan, but I thought him still too far back to shoot effectively as our boats rose and fell and the waves passed beneath us from our starboard quarter and hurried toward their doom on the beach.

Zee moved and then was quiet again. I began to shiver and was happy for it. I hunched my shoulders and pressed my teeth together so they'd not chatter. We sailed on.

I wished for a fog and got none. On the other hand, the night was gradually growing darker, and there would be neither stars nor moon to light Tristan's hunt. I wished for heavy rain, for a curtain of rain to fall between his boat and mine, but no such rain fell, only the steady wind-driven shower that had begun when we'd first fetched the beach.

I wondered if I could tie the tiller and then go overboard with Zee and let the boat sail on. I could rope the two of us together and perhaps make shore while Tristan pursued my empty boat. Men overboard were almost impossible to see in stormy waters, and Tristan would surely miss us.

But my earlier efforts to tie the tiller had not been notably successful. Every shift of weight had changed the boat's balance and caused her to point up and stop. If that happened when we went overboard, Tristan would have easy pickings when he sailed down upon us.

I wondered if Zee would float ashore alive if I put her overboard in her life jacket. I doubted it, for she was unconscious and could do nothing to keep her face out of the sea. Many a sailor was drowned while afloat in his life jacket. If she were awake, she could do it, I thought. “Wake up!” I said to her, but she only sighed and slept.

We sailed on, Tristan's dim sail growing taller in our
wake. I thought of the romance of Tristan and Isolde, of how Tristan's ship was to bear a white sail if he lived but a black one if he'd died, and how the wrong sail had been mounted and Isolde, believing her lover dead, had died herself before he could arrive and love her, and how, finding her dead, he, too, had died of grief. Tristan Cooper was not so romantic a figure. If there was any dying to be done, he did not plan it to be his.

The combing splintered, and I looked astern and thought I saw Tristan raise the shotgun above his head in a sort of salute. Not a bad shot, all things considered. At least he had hit the boat. If he got much closer, we were in real trouble. Zee stirred and rolled awkwardly onto her back, the life jacket wadded clumsily about her. “Wake up!” I said, but she only made a sleepy noise and brushed vaguely at the rain that fell on her face.

How long had we been sailing this odd slow motion race? It was now darkest night and about all I could see against the night was the white of foam, the blur of Tristan's sail and the line of surf on the dark shore. In my ears were the sounds of wind, water, and the little boat itself as her rigging strained and thrust her eastward. I was cold but my brain was fuzzy. I sang. Many verses of sea chanties.

“What do you do with a drunken sailor?

What do you do with a drunken sailor?

What do you do with a drunken sailor?

Early in the morning?”

What do you do? You put him in the scuppers with a hose pipe on him, you keelhaul him till he's sober, you shave his belly with a rusty razor, early in the morning. I sang of the
Golden Vanity,
of Henry Martin, of High Barbaree.

“Don't,” said Zee's voice irritably. “I'm trying to sleep.” I squinted down at her. She had pulled her knees up and was hugging herself, her eyes shut tight.

“Wake up!” I said, but she only hugged herself tighter. I
sang “Blow the Man Down” and “The Maid of Amsterdam,” and Zee began to squirm and mutter.

Then, ahead and to the left, I saw lights on shore. We were off Katama and those were houses! Hope. I looked behind me. Where was Tristan? He'd disappeared. Hope and disbelief surged through me. Had he broached? Had he been taken unaware by some sort of rogue wave?

But then I saw him, no longer in my wake but sailing a course between me and the beach, still behind but closer to shore so that if I headed for the beach he'd arrive there at almost the same time. Tristan's brain and vision were not clouded by drugs, and he must have seen the lights before I did. He did not intend us to fetch shore here.

How much longer could I hold a lead? A mile? Less? After that he could come alongside and at close range attempt his business. I thought of the shotguns and rifle I had at home. Even my own service revolver would be something. But those weapons were all locked away and would do me no good.

Zee was slowly waking up. Not too much longer and I could put her overboard and give her, at least, a chance at life. Thinking of this, I was surprised to see her struggle into a sitting position and gaze fuzzily around. She looked at the boat and at me and up at the sail and rubbed her eyes.

“Jeff,” she said, yawning. She smiled a sleepy, confused smile. “What's going on?” She hugged herself. “I'm cold.”

It was not a time for gentle introductions to reality. As soon as her eyes cleared, I told her where we were and why. She looked at me with confusion. “What? I don't understand you.”

I told her again, watching Tristan's sail move through the darkness between us and the line of white surf on the beach. His boat was now just behind my port quarter and perhaps a hundred yards away. Time was running out.

Zee rubbed her face and caught up rain water from the bilge and splashed herself with it. “What are we going to do?” she asked.

“I want you to slide overboard and swim for the beach. He won't see you, and you'll have a good chance of making
it since it's downwind. When you get there, find a phone and call the cops.”