Early the next morning, I phoned the Carberg house hoping that Hale Drummand would be home. No one answered. I’d barely hung up when Jack Spitz finally returned my call of the previous evening
“So much for my ASAP message on your machine,” I groused. “I thought you government types were supposed to be servants of us civilians. Some servant.”
“I had to go down to Washington,” he explained. “I just got back. What’s up?”
I told him about Drummand’s disappearance and about finding the site from which someone had been watching the Carberg house.
He became immediately serious. “I’ll get out to the house and have a look at things. Are the woman and child safe?”
I told him where they were.
“Good,” he said. “I remember meeting Professor Skye and his family. They’re good people. Try to keep Mrs. Price and the girl with them until we find out what’s going on.”
“I’m going to see them this morning after breakfast. Then I’ll meet you at the Carberg house and show you where I found the soda can and cigarette butts. Maybe your lab guys can learn something from them.”
“It would be nice to find Drummand while we’re at it.”
“Yes, it would.” I hung up.
In the kitchen Zee and the kids were digging into blueberry pancakes, and Brady was drinking coffee.
“If you have hopes of sharing these, you’d better sit down and start eating,” said Zee, pouring maple syrup over her stack of cakes.
That seemed like good advice, so I followed it. While I ate I announced my plans for the day and got Brady’s outline of his.
“We can then exchange gleaned wisdom over cocktails this evening,” he concluded.
I gave him an admiring look. “You’re the only person I can ever remember saying ‘gleaned.’ Is that lawyer talk?”
“Lawspeak 101. I aced it.” He smiled modestly.
Zee got up and put her dishes in the sink. “Two half-wits usually make one whole wit, but I’m not sure it adds up that high in this case. Well, I’m off to work. I’ll drop the kids at camp on my way.”
“Ma.”
“What, Diana?”
“Can we go to the beach instead?”
“Not today. Your dad and I and Brady all have to work.”
“Rats.”
“Double rats,” agreed Joshua.
But the rats gave me an idea.
After Zee and the children left, Brady, a prodigious coffee drinker, finished a final cup and stood up. “Normally I’d stay here and help do the dishes, but I’m a busy man with places to go, things to do, and people to see. You know what I mean?”
I feigned disgust. “I know lawyers are like cops: You can never find one when you need one but they surround you when you don’t.”
“I’ll see you tonight.” He grinned and breezed out the door.
I often point out to Zee that I have to do everything, and here was more proof. But I couldn’t really complain because of our house rule that the person who cooks doesn’t have to clean up afterward as long as the food is good, and blueberry pancakes are very good indeed. I did some thinking while I washed and stacked the dishes, then got into the snappy white Explorer and drove to the Skyes’ farm.
There, everyone was at breakfast except the twins, who were at that age when rising early never happens unless a ride is leaving for the ski slopes or the beach. I accepted another cup of coffee. If I drank much more of the stuff I’d probably qualify for law school.
“While you’re all here in one spot,” I began, “I want to make a suggestion. If I was in any position to make it an order, I would.”
“You people who don’t take orders very well are always anxious to give them,” said John, chewing a piece of toast. “What exactly do you have in mind?”
I told them about my conversation with Jake Spitz then said, “What I’d like to have happen is for Ethel and Janie to stay here for another day. They’ll be safe from prying eyes and I’ll be free to work with Jake and try and find out what’s going on.”
“Oh, no,” said Evangeline, shaking her head. “We couldn’t do that. It was asking too much for John and Mattie to put us up last night. We’ll go back to the house.”
“Of course they can stay with us!” said Mattie. Then she turned to Evangeline. “It’s nice to have a grown-up woman to talk to, and you’ll be doing my daughters the biggest favor they could ever imagine. One night with you in the same house was almost heaven. Another one will be paradise! Do stay.”
“In another day or so you should be able to go back to your own house,” I said. “Meanwhile, I thought you might all go over to East Beach for the day. There won’t be any celebs or reporters there, so you can swim and relax like normal human beings.” I pointed a finger at rosy Janie. “Except you, of course. You should stay under an umbrella with a lot of sunscreen on.”
“Mom, do I have to stay under an umbrella?”
“Well, maybe not all the time.”
“If you want company,” I said to Janie, “Joshua and Diana are dying to go to the beach.”
“Yes!” Janie looked pleased. She was a child who, I suspected, spent a lot of time with adults and was happy at the thought of spending some with people her own age.
“Plenty of room in the Jeep for everybody,” said John.
I looked at Evangeline. “Did you pack your bathing suits in those overnight bags?”
She smiled the smile that had caused many a young man’s heart to throb. “Amazing, but true. Maybe I have the sight.”
“If John wasn’t such a prude you could probably all swim in the buff, but professors are notorious puritans.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Mattie, theatrically ogling her husband then popping a last bite of sausage into her mouth. “Stop at your kids’ camp and tell them we’ll be coming by for Diana and Joshua. We’ll pick up their swimsuits at your place on the way to Chappy and we’ll have the cell phone so you can get in touch if you have to.”
I rose from my chair. “I’ll come by before supper and let you know what’s going on, if I get it figured out by then.”
Evangeline touched my arm. “I’m worried about Hale.”
“Don’t let it ruin your day. There’s probably a pretty simple explanation for him not showing up. He may be back at the house right now, talking with Jake Spitz.”
“I hope so.”
I hoped so, too, but I doubted it.
I drove to the Carberg house. Spitz was inside. A small pair of binoculars hung around his neck. Hale Drummand was not in sight.
“How many keys are there to this place?” I asked.
“Three that I know of. One for Drummand, one for Mrs. Price, and one for me. I’ve been through the house and garage and there’s no sign of anything unusual having happened.”
“Is there an answering machine?”
“Yes, but there are no messages on it. Let’s take a ride over yonder.” He gestured toward the point of land thrusting out into the pond to the east. “That’s the place where Drummand went missing, isn’t it?”
“That’s it.”
We drove there in the white Ford and I showed him the tire tracks behind the trees and the spot where I’d found the can and cigarette butts. There, he put his binoculars to his eyes and studied the house to the west.
“Good view, but who was here, and why?”
“The benign possibilities include fans who stumbled onto where Evangeline was staying, or paparazzi trying for a scoop.”
He grunted. “And on the malignant side, maybe somebody with bad intentions. Kidnapping, maybe, or worse.”
“Worse?”
He opened his mouth, hesitated, then said, “Celebrities get stalked all the time and shot often enough to keep guys like Hale Drummand in business. Evangeline is a star with a capital S. A guy with the right rifle and scope could do a lot of damage from here and probably be back in Edgartown before the cops showed up.” He swept the pond with his binoculars. “If I wasn’t so damned shorthanded already I’d put a man out here.”
“The whole island’s short of fuzz right now. Maybe Thornberry can contribute more agents. I imagine Evangeline can afford them.”
“Show me where Drummand came ashore.”
There was no path leading through the woods, so we followed the beach out to the point, where we found the canoe right where I’d left it.
Spitz again used his glasses to sweep the pond and the barrier beach. “Drummand must have gone somewhere after he landed here, but where?”
“Janie didn’t watch him when he paddled across,” I said. “She was on the ocean side of the barrier beach. But he saw something or someone that made him want to come over here.”
“Friend or enemy?”
“He expected to go back to the little girl. He told her to wait for him.”
“Friend, then. Or someone he didn’t consider dangerous, at least.”
“That’s how I see it. But maybe he was wrong.”
Spitz frowned at the trees and underbrush. “Let’s take a look. You follow the beach on around the point and I’ll cut through the woods. Meet you on the other side. Sing out if you cut sign.”
He went into the trees, walking a hunter’s walk, silent, his eyes roaming ahead of him and to either side.
Mine was the easier job, for if there was a sign to be found, I’d see it in the sand and short beach grass.
But there was nothing to suggest Drummand or anyone else had walked there; I saw only deer tracks and signs of birds and small mammals. I completed my circumnavigation of the point and cut back to the Explorer. I was headed into the woods when Spitz came into view.
“Anything?”
“No.” Spitz wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “Let’s go through these woods again, keeping about twenty feet apart. We should be able to sweep the area pretty well in a couple of hours.”
That roused my curiosity, but I said nothing. Spitz and I searched slowly back to the beach, keeping on paths as parallel as the undergrowth would allow. Then we moved to the west and reversed our course, coming back toward the Explorer. It was hot, sweaty work. We continued the search pattern, moving steadily to the west.
About an hour after we’d begun I came to a patch of disturbed earth and leaves. A faint trail of overturned leaves and broken twigs led to my left where there was a fallen tree. Growing next to its rotting trunk was a low scrub oak. As I nudged my foot through the leaves beneath my feet my sandal hit a chopped-off stump. I kicked the leaves away and saw small, fresh wood chips.
I followed the faint trail to the tree and saw that the oak brush wasn’t alive. It was leaning there, its leaves already beginning to wilt. I pushed it aside and saw more disturbed earth. A bloody hand was partially uncovered, thanks to some hungry animal or bird.
I called to Spitz and he came. He looked where I pointed and pulled a phone from his jacket pocket. When he finished his call and we had nothing to do but wait for the state police, I said, “Drummand wasn’t just a Thornberry PI, was he? He was more than that. Otherwise you wouldn’t have spent the morning sweating back and forth through the woods looking for him.”
Spitz wiped his brow again. He looked unwell, but he was already pulling himself together. “He was one of ours.”
“One of yours?” I was only mildly surprised. “What’s going on?”
He shook his head, as if to clear it. “I don’t know, but it’s something big and it has to do with Evangeline.”
He hadn’t quite gotten himself together yet, so I pushed it. “The FBI doesn’t play nursemaid to rock stars, as far as I know, not even the Beatles or the Stones or the Bristol Tars. Not even Evangeline. You got me into this, whatever it is, so level with me.”
He willed himself back to an even keel. “I can tell you this much,” he said, hedging carefully. “For months now we’ve been picking up chatter. Bits and pieces and sometimes whole messages. Cell phone calls, e-mail, even telegraph and snail mail, you name it. All very obscure. Some clearly coded. We don’t know what’s planned, but it’s big and it’s bad and some of it involves Evangeline and it’s going to happen soon if we don’t do something about it.”
“Are you telling me that Evangeline is some sort of terrorist?”
“No, I’m not telling you that. But her name keeps coming up. We’re here right now in part because she’s on the island. Drummand was our inside man.”
“Well, he must have reported to you,” I said impatiently. “What did he tell you?”
“He never reported anything worth reporting. And he won’t be telling us anything in the future.” Spitz’s face had lost its pallor and was back to its normal color. He looked at me very hard. “Evangeline trusts you,” he said. “You’re going to be our inside man from now on.”