11

The Cloud house looked different today. It looked gayer, even though it had been visited by death. The sun was shining today, and it caught at the gray shingles of the house, caught at the scattered paint buckets on the front porch and the brilliantly decorated stone heads of the souvenir tomahawks.

There was no sign of life about the house. The police, the medical examiners, the laboratory technicians, the photographers—all had apparently come and gone.

Zach did not know what he was looking for. He had come here on impulse, and now that he was here he felt somewhat foolish. Had he hoped to find Cloud or the boy? He didn’t know.

He sighed, got out of the car, and walked to the house. The front door was unlatched. He went inside. The house was very still, very empty. In the living room, the police had chalked an outline of Evelyn Cloud’s body on the wood floor and a dark brown stain had saturated the wood near the chalked head. A blood stain and a chalk outline, he thought. That’s all that’s left of an Indian woman who tried to help me. And her husband has run away—and why?

Because he’s scared.

Scared of what?

Scared of an international spy ring trying to steal the plans for the Nike.

It didn’t sound plausible. How would an Indian swordfisherman get involved with spies? No, it sounded wrong. But what sounded right? He looked around the room, trying to visualize Evelyn Cloud fighting off her blond attacker, ripping the medallion from his neck, and then succumbing to the blows of the tomahawk.

Enid Murphy was a blonde.

So was Peter Rambley, the real estate salesman.

And so was Freddie Barton who was here for the express purpose of sailing his Raven in the regatta tomorrow.

How many blonds are there on Martha’s Vineyard? Zach wondered. How many blonds are capable of committing murder? He shrugged, looked around the room again, and despondently went out to the kitchen.

The dish towel surprised him because he was certain the police would not have left it here. And yet it hung on the towel rack over the sink, the large smear of blood on it bright and red. He shook his head wonderingly, and then he stepped closer to the towel. There was a peculiar smell in the kitchen, the smell of …

Turpentine?

Of course. The painting Evelyn Cloud did, the souvenir tomahawks. He took the dish towel from the rack and smelled the stain. Paint. Not blood, but paint. He smiled. Things had come to a pretty pass when you automatically assumed paint was blood. But had the towel been here yesterday? He tried to reconstruct his entrance into the kitchen on the afternoon he’d found the body. Surely he’d have seen something with such a bright red stain. And if the towel had not been there then, had the paint been wiped onto it later? Last night? And by whom? John Cloud? Before he fled with the boy?

But why?

Red paint.

There were buckets of paint on the front porch. Zach dropped the towel and went out there. At least a dozen cans of paint rested among the painted tomahawk heads. There were four cans of red paint. But only one of them had a screwdriver lying alongside it. He picked up the screwdriver and pried the sticky lid from the can. It was full almost to the top with the same bright red paint that had been on the dish towel. Had John Cloud opened this same paint can last night or early this morning? The paint looked untouched. He looked at the brushes lying on a piece of canvas on the wooden floor of the porch. They had all been cleaned thoroughly. None of them were stained with red paint. Then if John Cloud had not done any painting, why had he opened this can? Or had he painted and then simply cleaned his brush?

On a dish towel?

Why not? He had wiped his hands clean on it, hadn’t he? Again, Zach allowed his eyes to roam over the porch. Paint rags, soiled and multicolored, lay on a table at the far end of the porch. He went to them. None of them had been used recently, certainly not this morning. John Cloud had wiped off a smear of red paint, and he had wiped it onto a dish towel. Unless the man were an absolute slob, the act seemed to indicate a man in a hurry. But how had he got the paint on himself? The lid. Of course. It was impossible to touch it without smearing red paint onto the hand.

Zach went back to the can of red paint. On impulse, he thrust the blade of the screwdriver into the can. He felt it strike something. He prodded the depths of the paint again. There was something stiff and unyielding inside the can. He dropped the screwdriver, rolled up his sleeve, took off his watch, and reached into the can. His hand came out dripping with red paint, holding a rectangular-shaped package. Zach dropped the package to the canvas and tried to untie the heavy cord around it. The cord was wet, and difficult to manage. He went back into the kitchen, wiped his hand on the dish towel, and then found a knife in the kitchen-table drawer.

His fingers were trembling as he cut the cord. He unfolded the soggy brown wrapping paper carefully. The wrapping paper concealed an oil-skin pouch, and he wondered for a moment why a tobacco pouch was immersed in a can of paint, and then he unwound the pouch, reached into it, and found another packet of wrapping paper, this one untouched by the red paint. He cut the cord on it, and opened it. His eyes widened in surprise.

He was looking at forty-five-thousand dollars in one-thousand-dollar bills.

And at that instant, he heard the automobile coming up the dirt road.