Shooting at Loons (22 page)

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? Nobody needs that ammunition anymore.”

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.

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 embarrassed 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 shell 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.

Mahlon and Guthrie were out working on the trawler as I dumped the shrimp heads and shells 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 shift the boat off Linville Pope’s property before she served them with papers for trespassing.

“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.

“Probably,” I said.

“Good! Right, Grandpap? Now we don’t have to shift her till she’s done, do we?”

“Hand me them nails,” Mahlon grunted. “You keep talking and not working and we’ll never get her finished.”

“Yonder comes Daddy,” Guthrie said.

The truck headlights jounced down the rutted drive and Mickey Mantle made a skidding three-point turn so that the back of his truck was in position.

“Hey-o there, Judge!”

“I thought you had your license pulled,” I said.

He grinned. “Judges don’t write tickets, do they?”

“Daddy!” Guthrie interrupted. “Did you hear?” His changing voice squeaked in his excitement. He clambered up into the truck bed and handed out the block and tackle, chattering the whole time to his father about Linville’s murder.

“Yeah, I just heard it. Sammy said it was on the news.”

“Y’all here to talk or get this motor in?” said Mahlon.

When they had the block and tackle attached to the trestle and a heavy cable fixed to the chain around the engine, they hooked the other end to the pickup. I volunteered to crank up the truck and pull the cable slow and steady for them while the three of them guided the heavy engine up over the side of the boat. Then I backed up so they could lower it into the hold.

“Damned if I don’t feel like busting a bottle of beer over that engine right now!” Mickey Mantle said when the chains and cable were removed and the engine sat squarely where it was supposed to.

“Time enough for beers when we bring in our first catch,” Mahlon said sharply. “Hand me my saw and let’s get these last strips on ‘fore midnight.”

“Before I go,” I said, “I need to ask you. Any of y’all see somebody break in over there this afternoon?”

That got their attention.

“Naw,” said Mickey Mantle.

“I was fishing,” said Mahlon.

“What’d they take?” asked Guthrie.

“Nothing, so far’s I can tell,” I admitted. “But they messed up Carl’s lock and strewed my things around.”

“I worn’t here,” Mahlon said again and revved up his Skilsaw with a conversation-stopping roar.

I waved goodnight and started back to the cottage, but as I circled the boat shed, I heard my name called in a voice so low that the noisy saw almost drowned it out.

It was Mahlon’s wife. White-haired and half-crippled with arthritis, the reclusive Effrida beckoned to me from a darkened side window.

“I heared what you asked them,” she said in an urgent rush of island speech. “I seen him, the man what broke into Carl’s this evening. It was a few minutes after five.”

“Did you know him?”

“I seen him before. Lives over to Beaufort, I think, but I couldn’t call his name.”

She then proceeded to describe Chet Winberry right down to the white fishing cap and navy-blue windbreaker he’d been wearing when Barbara Jean and I met him at their landing.

No wonder he’d caught only three fish all afternoon.

There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign;
There everlasting spring abides,
And never-withering flowers...
But tim’rous mortals start and shrink
To cross this narrow sea, And linger, trembling on the brink,
And fear to launch away.

...Could we but climb where Moses stood,
And view the landscape o’er,
Not Jordan’s stream nor death’s cold flood
Should fright us from the shore,

—Isaac Watts

“A navy-blue windbreaker with attached hood,” I raged to Kidd Chapin. “Remember how you thought last night’s prowler was wearing a hooded jacket? The lying bastard! Pulled a muscle jogging for his newspaper this morning, did he? Too bad he didn’t break his goddamned leg last night.”

“Now hold on,” said Kidd. “Just because he broke into your place doesn’t mean he was the one you chased. Think about it. Why would he look for the papers over there if he thought they were here?”

“Because he didn’t know they were here till this morning. Jay Hadley discussed it with Alliance members at Andy’s funeral, but Chet was talking to someone else when they went into their huddle. Barbara Jean told him at breakfast that I had Andy’s papers, and I bet he worked the conversation around to find out naturally so she doesn’t suspect a thing. He must have searched the trunk of my car at noon and when he didn’t find them there, he rode his boat over here.”

I was furious when I thought of Chet’s nice helpful offer to look over the papers for me because, quote, “I know most of the players.”

Didn’t he just, the bastard?

“Well at least he saved me some time,” I told Kidd. “I was going to start with Linville’s latest deals and then work back to the earliest. Now I’ll start with the Ritchie House transaction.”

While I retrieved the relevant documents from their hiding place between the newspaper sections and started laying them out in chronological order on the kitchen table, Kidd puttered quietly between refrigerator and sink and fixed me a shrimp salad.

It was delicious. “I didn’t know I’d brought lettuce,” I said.

“You didn’t,” he answered. “You also didn’t bring the green peppers or the tomatoes. Or the pint of ice cream in the freezer.”

“Ice cream?”

“Fudge Ripple.” He cocked his long homely face at my interest. “If you’re nice to me, I may let you have a spoonful.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” I said, feeling oddly comforted.

An hour later, I knew why Chet had tried so desperately to steal those papers.

It wasn’t hard to find once I knew what I was looking for, although I still might have missed the significance if Andy hadn’t practically drawn an arrow.

Twelve years ago, Linville Pope had bought from Ritchie Janson the waterfront property that later became the Ritchie House. She had put up her husband’s dilapidated Morehead motel as part of the security. The rest was secured by the title to the
Washington Neville
, put up by Chester Amos Winberry with his power of attorney for Neville Fishery when he co-signed for the balance of the loan. The bank officer who approved the loan was probably one of Chet’s good ol’ buddies.

All done with a wink and a nod, no doubt.

“What’s illegal about that?” asked Kidd.

“The thing is, he had a fiduciary interest in the property because he was also Ritchie Janson’s attorney. Even if he were scrupulous about the actual sale—which, in point of fact, he wasn’t—that would certainly get a jaundiced look from the Bar Association if it came out, although he does seem to have made Linville pay a fair price.”