“You really want to talk business?” I said to J.W. He shrugged. “I figured you’d want to.”
I held up my martini. “In due course.”
The Jacksons’ balcony looked out at the salt pond and, beyond it, Nantucket Sound. The sky toward the east was darkening and the ocean looked flat and purple. A gang of swallows were chasing mosquitoes around the yard, and a couple of half-grown cottontails were hopping on the lawn, approaching dangerously close to Zee’s vegetable garden.
“What’s your secret?” I said, holding up my glass. I’m not normally a martini guy, but J.W. made excellent ones.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said. “I tell you, you tell the bartender at the Ritz, next thing you know it won’t be a secret.”
“I don’t know the bartender at the Ritz.”
Zee laughed. “He won’t even tell me. Says he’s going to bequeath the recipe to Joshua. But not Diana. It’s a guy thing, he says. Seems to me, everything’s a guy thing.”
“At least tell me whether you stir or shake.”
J.W. shook his head. “Can’t say. There’s a woman present.” He refilled all of our glasses from the pitcher. “You feel like talking about your day?”
“Sure,” I said. “I damn near had my fortune told.”
“I wouldn’t’ve taken you for a believer,” said Zee.
“I’m not,” I said. “It’s silly. Thing is, I think she was seeing—or hearing, or smelling, or whatever she does—she was seeing something. About me, I mean. It was actually a little spooky. I told her not to tell me. I can’t imagine knowing what my fate is, you know?”
Zee laughed. “If you feel that way, it means you do believe in it. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t care if she told you.”
“She got you there, pal,” said J.W.
I shrugged. “Point is, I was interested in what she might conjure up about Christa. I showed her the picture. She saw bright lights and explosions and chaos and a big eye in the sky, or some damn thing, watching it all, and—how did she say it?—and spirits colliding.”
“What do you make of that?” said Zee.
“Nothing. Like I said, I don’t believe in it. It was…interesting, that’s all.” I held up my half-empty martini glass. “You don’t shake a good martini, I know that much. Ice cubes colliding with each other chips them. Melted ice dilutes the vodka. This is definitely not watered down.” I arched my eyebrows at J.W.
“Flattery’ll get you nowhere,” he said.
I handed J.W. Christa’s picture. “Don’t suppose you’ve run into her in your travels?”
He frowned at it, closed his eyes for a minute, then shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s something familiar about her, but it’s probably some face I’ve seen on TV or something.” He squinted at the picture again, then put it down on the table. “The problem, of course, is that lots of people look like lots of other people. I’ll keep an eye out for this girl in my travels with the singer.”
“And how are the travels with the singer going?” I said.
J.W. rolled his eyes. “You don’t want to know.”
“Sure I do. It’ll give us an excuse to have one more refill.” I handed him my glass.
He gave us all refills. Then he told me about his adventures with Evangeline.
When he finished, Zee turned to me and said, “See, Brady, I knew it sounded too good to be true. Tooling around the island in a nice new air-conditioned car. Showing the visiting celebrity the sights. No danger. Cushy work. Easy money. Ha! My instinct was to refuse to let him do it.”
“But when you found out it was Evangeline,” said J.W., “you changed your tune.”
“I should’ve trusted my instincts,” she said. “Always trust your instincts. My mother taught me that.”
“Wise woman, your mother,” said J.W.
The next morning I woke up with a nervous, acid feeling in my stomach, as if something was going to happen if I didn’t do something about it. The fact that I had no idea what might happen or what I should do made the feeling worse. I attributed it to Princess Ishewa and her damn clairvoyance. I never should’ve gone within a mile of her shop.
I was itchy to get going. I told J.W. my plan for the day, such as it was, and he told me his. Then I climbed into his ancient Land Cruiser, drove down to the harbor in Edgartown, and had breakfast at the Dock Street Café.
On an island with scores of excellent eateries, the Dock Street Café was the one I liked the best. As well as I could determine, they served breakfast all day and night. It seemed to be a gathering place for locals. It was always noisy, with people walking around talking to other people, but if you wanted to prop your newspaper up in front of you and read about the Red Sox, nobody bothered you.
I sat at the counter and had three over-easy eggs on top of corned beef hash, with home fries and wheat toast and a big glass of orange juice. A breakfast intended to get me through the whole day.
When I finished, the waitress took away my dishes, then came back to refill my coffee mug. She looked about twenty. She had brown hair and brown eyes and olive skin and a quick smile. Her name tag said KATE.
“Kate,” I said to her, “can I bother you for a minute?”
She glanced around the café. “A minute, I guess.”
“I wonder if you’ve seen this girl.” I put Christa’s picture on the counter.
Kate glanced at it, narrowed her eyes, then shook her head. “I’m terrible at faces. I might’ve seen her. She looks like lots of people. I don’t know her, I can tell you that.”
“Do you go to parties, hang out with the young people down here?”
“Sure.”
“If I gave you this picture, would you keep an eye out for her and let me know if you see her?”
She frowned. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“On what you want with her.”
“If I told you, would you believe me?”
She looked at me for a moment. “Why should I?”
I fished out one of my business cards and handed it to her. “I’m a lawyer.”
She smiled. “And that makes you trustworthy?”
“Touché,” I said. I tapped Christa’s picture. “This girl ran away two years ago. Her parents want me to find her. Her father’s dying, and I hope to talk her into going home to see him.”
“Oh, man,” she said. “That sucks big-time.” She peered at me. “That’s the truth?”
“It is,” I said. “Honest.”
“You’re not like a cop or something?”
“No. Her name is Christa Doyle, and she’s eighteen years old. She’s committed no crime, unless you count breaking her mother’s and father’s hearts. I just want to talk with her.” I wrote Christa’s name and the Jacksons’ phone number on the back of the picture and pushed it toward her. “Keep this. If you see her, please don’t say anything about this to her. Just call me.” I hesitated. “There’s a reward.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes,” I said. “Five hundred dollars if you spot her and help me find her and I get to talk with her.”
“What if I see her but you can’t find her and talk to her.”
I shook my head. “No deal. You could tell me anything.”
She stuck out her lower lip and pretended to pout. “You don’t trust me?”
“Five hundred bucks is a lot of money.”
At that moment, another waitress came over and said, “Hey, Katie. Let’s go, huh?”
Kate took Christa’s picture, folded it twice, and shoved it into the pocket of her jeans. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “They’re yelling at me.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I left Kate a big tip and walked out of the Dock Street Café smiling. A reward. Brilliant, Coyne. Offering Kate a reward had come out of my mouth without, as far as I could tell, passing through my brain. But now that I thought about it, it seemed like a good idea. If it led me to Christa, five hundred dollars would be a bargain.
My plan, if you could call it that, was to spend this Monday covering as much of the three easternmost towns on the Vineyard—Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, and Vineyard Haven—as I could, although I wasn’t exactly sure what “covering” meant. I figured I’d walk up and down the streets, go into any business establishments that struck me as places that might attract people like Christa, study as many faces as I could, leave her picture with likely people, repeat the reward offer, and see what happened. Putting in the hours. Thrashing around.
If nothing flew out of the bushes today, I’d start prowling around the other parts of the island, and I’d keep prowling and thrashing and looking at faces and talking to people until something happened. The Celebration for Humanity was scheduled for Friday and Saturday nights, and if I hadn’t found Christa before then, that would be a good place to look for her. I figured J.W. could get me in.
I spent the rest of the morning in Edgartown. I talked to shop owners, restaurant hostesses, real estate brokers, gas station attendants. I dropped into clothing stores and gift shops and bookstores. In three or four hours, I found nobody who thought they’d seen Christa Doyle.
I left her photo with some people, but I didn’t want to paper the island with her face. If Christa saw it, there was the danger that she’d hole up or flee, and then I’d never find her. So I chose carefully—people who I felt reasonably confident would not be indiscreet.
A little after noontime I figured I’d done what I could in Edgartown. Geographically, Oak Bluffs should be my next stop, but I’d already put in some time there, so I headed over to Vineyard Haven.
I spent an hour or so walking around the ferry landing and then began strolling the narrow streets just up the hill, and on one of those streets I spotted a couple of college kids, a boy and a girl, coming out of a tattoo parlor. The girl was as tall as the boy, and she had long, jet-black hair, which she wore in a long braid that dangled down the middle of her back. From behind, I thought it might be Christa.
I crossed the street, looped around ahead of them, crossed back, and started down the sidewalk toward them. As they approached me, I stopped and pretended to look into a shop window. I didn’t want Christa to recognize me. Not until I had a plan for approaching her. Finding her was the first step.
Well, this girl wasn’t Christa. Right age, right height, right hair color, right complexion. But her face was too round, her mouth was too small, and her nose was wrong.
I don’t know why it made me feel good to spot someone who vaguely resembled Christa, but it did. It felt like progress.
That couple had come out of a tattoo parlor. I went in.
Tattoos were no longer the exclusive domain of sailors and bikers and prison convicts. I remembered all the earrings that Christa wore. If she was into body piercing, maybe she was also into tattoos.
The walls of the little shop were lined with colored drawings that were, I assumed, tattoo designs. Many of them were quite elaborate and artistic. There were Indian chiefs in full headdress, a variety of American-flag motifs, bald eagles, cartoon characters, dozens of religious pictures ranging from simple crosses to crosses with Jesus nailed to them. There were animals and fish and reptiles and lizards and butterflies and bugs. There were abstract designs and ancient symbols and alphabets.
A woman was leaning her elbows on the counter. Dark blonde hair cut in a Beatles mop-top, rimless glasses, flowered blouse buttoned primly to the throat. She looked like a fifth-grade schoolteacher—a bit out of place in a tattoo parlor. She had her chin in her hands, and she was smiling at me.
“Are you the artist?” I said to her.
“I’m one of ’em,” she said. “I’m Stormy.”
“Brady,” I said.
“First time?”
“Huh?”
“First tattoo?”
“Oh,” I said. “No. I don’t think I want a tattoo.”
“Window-shopping, huh?”
“Something like that. I didn’t even realize tattooing was legal in Massachusetts.”
“It’s only been a few years,” she said. “I used to work in New Hampshire.”
“So is business good?”
“Unbelievable. Last few weeks we’ve had to make appointments for people.”
“Actually,” I said, “I’m trying to find somebody. I wonder if you might’ve seen her.” I showed her Christa’s picture.
She looked at it, then looked up at me. “Why are you looking for this girl?”
I told her about Mike and Neddie Doyle.
Stormy hesitated. “That’s the truth, huh?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a lawyer?”
I nodded.
“She was here,” she said.
“Really? You sure?”
“I’m pretty sure. It was, oh, a week ago. I didn’t do her, but I was here when she came in. She’s the kind of girl you notice.”
“Who, um, did her, then?”
“Buster. He’s out back with a client now. You can talk to him when he’s done if you want.”
“I definitely do,” I said. “Tell me what you remember about Christa.”
Stormy shrugged. “Not much. I noticed her, that’s all. She was with a guy, I think. I didn’t pay too much attention. I was talking with somebody else, and she was with Buster. You should talk to him.”
“I will. How soon will he be available?”
“Hang on.” She pushed open a door behind the counter, stuck her head into the doorway, and there was an exchange of voices. Then she closed the door. “He’s just finishing up. Another few minutes.”
Some other people had come into the shop, and Stormy turned her attention to them. I looked at the tattoo designs on the wall, and five minutes later a man’s voice said, “Sir? You wanted to talk to me?”
I turned. Buster was a skinny fiftyish guy with a half-bald head, a gray ponytail, a gold hoop in his left ear, and thick glasses. An old hippie, or maybe an easy rider—or both.
I shook hands with him, and when I did, I noticed the colorful designs tattooed on his fingers and wrists and forearms. They snaked their way up under his shirtsleeves and peeked out at the open throat of his shirt. “Stormy says you might’ve done a tattoo for a girl about a week ago. Her name is Christa, and I need to find her.”
He frowned. “I don’t remember the name.”
I showed him Christa’s picture.
He glanced at it and nodded. “Oh, okay. I do remember her. She wanted an eye.”
“An eye?” I said. “The tattoo, you mean?”
“Come on out back, I’ll show you.”
I followed him into the cramped back room where he kept his tattooing equipment. There was a padded, waist-high table and a couple of chairs. Buster and I sat in the chairs, facing each other.
He took out a sketch pad, drew quickly on it, and handed it to me. It looked like a child’s drawing of an eye—just a circle inside an eye-shaped oval with a pupil in the middle and a few abstract lines to suggest a brow and the bridge of a nose.
Princess Ishewa had mentioned an eye in the sky. Christa had an eye tattoo. Hmm. I’m a confirmed skeptic, but I couldn’t help wondering if the princess did have some kind of second sight.
“Is there some significance to this?” I said to Buster. “It looks sort of familiar.”
“It’s some kind of ancient symbol, I think. I’ve done others like it.” He shrugged. “Don’t know what it’s called. I’m an artist, man. I make pictures. People ask for something, I assume it has significance to them. They ask for it, I draw it.”
“Where did she get it done?”
“Right here.” He waved his hand around the room.
I smiled. “I meant, what part of her body.”
“Ah,” he said. “Her left hip.” He patted his own skinny hip. “Toward the back.”
“Well, as I said, I’m looking for her. No chance you might have an address or phone number or something, is there?”
He reached up to a shelf and brought down the kind of notebook that I used to take lecture notes in when I was in college. “I keep track of all my work,” he mumbled. He squinted at the page. “Here it is. Week ago yesterday. Girl said her name was Raven. No address or phone number. I always ask, but I don’t require it if they pay cash.”
“Raven?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t ask for her identification. She looked plenty old enough. Mid-twenties, I’d guess. I just ask their name so we can talk. She said it was Raven.”
“But you’re sure it’s this girl.” I pointed at Christa’s picture.
“Oh, sure. It was her, all right. Nice kid. Nervous, though.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Most people are nervous about their first tattoo. I didn’t have the feeling that was it with her, though.”
“No?”
“No. She was with a guy. It seemed like something was going on between them.”
“Like boyfriend-girlfriend stuff?”
“Could be, but I didn’t really get that feeling. It was more like he brought her here to get this done. As if it was his idea and she was doing it for him.”
“This guy, did you get his name?”
Buster closed his eyes for a minute. “Sorry.” He shook his head. “I guess she might’ve said his name, but if she did, I don’t remember what it was. They didn’t talk much. He came back here while I did her. Had to see the whole thing.”
“You let people do that?”
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “So she paid cash?”
“Yes. Actually, he did. The guy paid for it. Sixty bucks. That’s cheap for a tattoo. This eye. Just a few lines. About as easy as it gets.”
“I was hoping you might have a credit-card receipt.”
“Sorry.”
“You said you’ve done some of these eye tattoos before?”
“Up until this summer, I don’t believe I did more than one or two in my whole career. Lately there’s been a little run on ’em, for some reason. I’ve done six or eight in the past two, three weeks. All on women.”
“This same eye?”
“Exactly like this one.”
“Young, attractive women?”
Buster frowned at me. “What makes you say that?”
I shrugged. “Just wondering.”
“Well, now that I think about it, I’d guess that would be right. Young, attractive women. All on the left hip. Some new fad, I guess.”
As I walked back to where I’d parked J.W.’s car down by the ferry landing, I realized that I’d better try to learn the significance of eye tattoos on the left hips of attractive young women.
I sat in the car for a few minutes with the sea breeze blowing through the windows. I’d taken Buster’s sketch of Christa’s eye tattoo with me. I took it out of my shirt pocket and looked at it. It looked back at me. No words were exchanged.
In about two minutes my mood swung from elated to discouraged. All I’d really learned was that Christa had, indeed, been here on the Vineyard a week ago, and if Alyssa Romano was to be believed, I already knew that. The fact that she was wearing a small tattoo on a part of her anatomy that would not normally be exposed meant something, I supposed. But it didn’t bring me any closer to finding her.
I was thinking maybe I should go hang around the beaches and ogle all the attractive young women wearing bikinis. I should look closely at their, um, hips, and see if an eye was looking back at me. If anyone asked me what I thought I was doing, I’d just say it was lawyer business.
A lawyer getting paid to ogle young women in bikinis? Who wouldn’t buy that story?
I looked at my watch. It was a little after three o’clock. That gave me a few hours before martini time on the Jackson balcony—plenty of time to drive around the island and remind myself of the lay of the land. I figured I’d follow the road that skirted the salt ponds on the south side through Edgartown and on out to Chilmark, take a swing around the westernmost tip of the island at Gay Head, then back around the north side through West Tisbury and Tisbury, and complete my circle at the Jacksons’ abode.
Call it reconnaissance. If anything struck me as a likely Christa clue, I’d make a note to go back on Tuesday when I had more time to check it out.
Also call it decompression. I hadn’t done much relaxing in the past few days. A leisurely summer-afternoon drive around a beautiful island with nobody talking to me, maybe some classical music or quiet jazz or even some good ol’ rock and roll on the radio—that’s what I needed.
I was on the Edgartown Road in Tisbury heading south when the blue light started flashing in my rearview window.