Shooting at Loons Read online

  “He’s a catbird, ol’ Kidd. But I’ll say this for him: he’s a fine lawman. Real big on conservation, too.” He gave me a considering look. “I bet you’re not married either.”

  “That’s it,” I laughed and turned toward my car, but Smith fell in step beside me.

  “The first road through the island was paved with seashells,” he confided. “You wouldn’t believe the pile of shells used to be off Shell Point.”

  “Where Indians used to come to the island every spring and pig out on oysters and clams,” I said. “I know. I’ve heard the stories.”

  “They say there were so many shells it was like they were trying to build a causeway out to the cape.” He kicked at the pavement consideringly. “Been better off to’ve kept this road in shells. Runoff from asphalt’s something awful. We ought to pass a law that for every twenty-five parking spaces, parking lots’ve got to have at least one deciduous tree. Because even if it’s clean rainwater—which it never is—too much fresh water can be just as bad for estuarine life as polluted water.”

  “Well,” I said heartily when we reached my car, “it’s certainly been nice talking to you and—”

  He leaned closer. “Kidd said if I saw you to ask if you like black olives or green peppers on your pizza.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Kidd said—”

  “No,” I interrupted. “I heard that part. You tell Officer Chapin that I said No way, José.”

  Smith rubbed his chin dubiously. “Well, I’ll tell him, but you know what’s going to happen, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “You’re probably going to get olives and peppers.”

  “You tell Kidd Chapin that if he shows up at my place, I’m going to turn on every light and blow a horn so that everybody in the neighborhood knows he’s there.”

  “Generally they ring a church bell,” Smith chuckled. “You hear a church bell ringing on a weekday in the spring, you can bet there’s a game warden on the island.”

  • • •

  Back at the cottage, I waved to Mahlon and Guthrie, who were still out working on the boat. Considering that Mahlon hoped to hold the Bynum boys to Andy’s promise of that truck engine, I was surprised he’d skipped the funeral. I slipped off my dress and got into jeans and a slouchy sweatshirt, thinking I’d go over and watch, but a car pulled up outside and I heard the door slam.

  It was Jay Hadley, still dressed for the funeral in a soft navy suit and red-and-white spectator pumps with a red purse. A far cry from the shirt and shorts she’d worn on Sunday. She carried a bulging manila folder.

  When I went to the door, she said, “Sorry to bother you, Judge, but I need a little advice, if you don’t mind.”

  I invited her in and offered her something to drink, but all she would take was a glass of ice water.

  “You see, Judge—”

  “Please. Call me Deborah.”

  Until then, she’d been business-like. Now she looked downright shy. “And I’m Jay.”

  That out of the way, I asked how I could help and she laid the manila folder on the couch between us.

  “These are some of Andy’s papers. See, the Alliance wants me to act as interim president and I said I would. Andy’s boy, Maxton, brought me over a big stack of stuff last night and when I was going through it—” She hesitated. “I don’t know if Barbara Jean Winberry’s told you how much Andy hated Linville Pope?”

  “I gather they didn’t get along very well, but I don’t know any details.”

  “Andy’s had it in for her ever since she wrecked his honey pot over on North River about a year ago.”

  I couldn’t help smiling as I remembered Andy talking about his honey pot.

  She gave a sad smile back and pushed away a lock of sun-bleached hair that had fallen into her eyes. “When there were no other oysters around, when nobody could find a half-box of crabs, Andy’d go progging around a place on North River and always bring home a nice mess for supper. Linville Pope helped develop a stretch right slam on his honey pot and that was the end of that. He was iller than a channel crab over it, and after that, seems like he was always out to get back at her.”

  I could understand. From what I’ve heard most watermen are secretive and protective of their special good luck places.

  “Anyhow, ‘bout a week ago, or maybe two weeks, Andy said he’d finally got the goods on her. ‘She’s built her house on sand,’ he said, and he was going to blow it down.”

  “He was that vindictive?”

  “Andy Bynum was one of the decentest men on the island and he did everything by the rules, but if you ever got on his bad side, he’d use the rules to get you back.” “He didn’t tell you what the goods were?”

  “No, but I know he spent a lot of time at the courthouse, messing in the public records. That’s what this is,” she said, patting the file folder. “His notes, the copies he made of her permits, newspaper stories and a bunch of other stuff. The thing is, I’ve been through it and if there’s something there, I can’t see it. You’re a lawyer. Maybe you could spot it.”

  “For what purpose?” I asked.

  “Linville Pope’s getting to be very strong in the area,” Jay said frankly. “She doesn’t mind cutting corners to get what she wants. And what she wants is all commercial fishing out of the sound. I think it’d be good if we could clip her wings just enough to even things out.”

  Much as I was starting to come down on the side of the watermen, I wasn’t easy about blackmail and coercion. On the other hand, if Linville really had done something illegal, why should she profit by it at their expense?

  “Okay,” I said, taking the folder. “We’ll see if she broke any of the rules.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Deborah.”

  “You’re welcome, Jay.”

  • • •

  The rain finally set in for real around dark and it rained so hard for a couple of hours that I had to go around closing windows.

  I only meant to just leaf through the folder and then go find something to eat, once the rain slacked. But I got absorbed in all the land deals Pope Properties had been involved in, and the next time I looked up, it was nearly ten P.M.

  Every eating place on the island would be closed by now.

  I’d left a side window cracked for ventilation and realized that somewhere, someone was cooking something that smelled luscious. Something with olive oil and garlic and—

  A low voice outside the window said, “Your pizza’s here.”

  9

  Ever present, truest Friend,

  Ever near Thine aid to lend,

  Leave us not to doubt and fear,

  Groping on in darkness drear,

  When the storms are raging sore,

  Hearts grow faint, and hopes give o’er,

  Whisper softly, “Wanderer, come!

  Follow Me, I’ll guide thee home.”

  —Marcus M. Wells

  “This is absolutely, positively the last time,” I told Kidd Chapin as I reached for a second slice of the best pizza I’d eaten in six months. Not only did it have olives and peppers and sausage, two slices even had anchovies, an irresistible combination. “If you don’t catch somebody shooting loons tomorrow morning, you’ll have to go back under the porch or go lie out in the bushes.”

  “And get my tailfeathers shot off?” he grinned. “Not!”

  “Well, it won’t be here,” I warned, “because I’ll finish up tomorrow evening and drive on back to Dobbs.”

  We were seated at the Formica kitchen table, shades drawn, splitting the last three beers in the refrigerator, and telling war stories.

  At least Kidd Chapin was. He reminded me of Terry Wilson, my SBI buddy. I’d already heard his oystering story about the poachers he’d caught only that day—two old-timers who swore on their mothers’ graves that they’d harvested that bushel of succulent bivalves before the thirty-first of March, the day oyster season officially closed. “They said they were just b
ringing those two-week-old sackfuls out in their boat to wet ‘em down again.”

  Next had come his bear story, two loon stories, and now we were onto spotlighting deer.

  “—so we’re trying to sneak up on this abandoned house out at the edge of a soybean field where we’ve heard there’s been lights flashing around at night and the sound of gunshots. Well, just about the time we get in range, the door flings open and this powerful flashlight beam sweeps across the field and then pow-pow-pow! We dive for cover and land in a briar-covered ditch with about six inches of water. A minute later, we hear the little skinny one yell, ‘I b’lieve I got him, Cletus!’

  “Ray and me, we raise up real easy like and see this man mountain come to the door—bushy red beard, carrying this humongous bowie knife and wearing a tee shirt that says ‘Kill ‘Em All And Let God Sort It Out.’ He’s one mean-looking mother. ‘Where?’ he says.

  “‘Over yonder,’ says the skinny one, and he’s laughing and whooping like he’s killed a bear, and here comes that flashlight beam again.”

  He savored an olive and took a deep swallow of beer.

  “Now Ray and me, we’ve got these riot shotguns, so I shout, ‘State Wildlife Officer! Throw down your gun!’ The big guy runs back inside, but the little guy’s not quite sure what to do. ‘Bout that time, Ray pumps a shell into the chamber and soon as he hears that, the little guy throws down his gun and hits the dirt, yelling, ‘I ain’t done nothing.’

  “I run around to the back of the house about the time the door opens and I think for sure I’m gonna see the snout of an M-16 or something. Instead, here comes Man Mountain’s nose, real cautious-like, and this little teeny voice says, ‘Who’s there?’ like he’s expecting the Avon lady.

  “I tell him to come on out with his hands up and it’s `Yessir! Yessir! Don’t shoot.’

  “So we get ‘em handcuffed, under arrest, down on their knees and all the time they’re swearing they ain’t done a thing. ‘Course Ray and me, we know they have, so we start gathering up the evidence and the first thing we find is this shotgun shell. Only it’s birdshot, nothing that’d bring down a deer. About twenty yards out, we finally find what the little guy was shooting at. Not a deer. A goddamned house cat!

  “I mean, here we are: two officers with riot guns, two guys handcuffed and under arrest, and one mangy dead Felis domesticus, which, you being a judge, you know is not against the law to shoot.”

  “So what’d you do?” I asked, licking tomato sauce from my fingers.

  “Only thing I can do.” He grinned and reached for the last piece of pizza. “I pick up that dead cat and I shake it in their faces and yell, ‘You sorry piece of garbage, you see this?’

  “And the little one starts whining, `Yessir, please sir, I didn’t mean to do it.’

  “‘You know this is against the law, don’t you?’

  “And the big one’s moaning, `Yessir, We’re sorry. We won’t never do it again. I promise you, sir!’

  “‘Okay,’ I say, ‘We’ll let you off this time, but we catch you shooting cats again, you’re gonna be in a heap of trouble.’ “

  Laughing, I topped his glass from the last bottle of beer and poured the rest into my own. “And cat lovers everywhere salute you, sir!”

  “‘Course, we actually did see some guys spotlighting deer a couple of nights later. We eased my state-issue Bronco down into this driveway on a country road and parked facing out. No lights on in the house, people had gone to bed. And we sit there about an hour till sure ‘nuff, here comes a pickup with two jokers sitting out there on the front fenders. One’s working the spotlight and the other has the gun. Well, we scrunch way down in the seat till after they pass, then I switch on the ignition and try to follow them and all of a sudden the whole right side of my Bronco sags down. We got out and find two of our tires melted slam down on the rims. Seems that old farmer was in the habit of dumping his hot coals and ashes in the driveway before he made up the fire and went to bed at night.”

  “Bet you had fun explaining that to your boss,” I said as he cleared away the box and paper plates and put the beer bottles in a recycling bag.

  “Well, tell you the truth, I could never exactly find the right time to break it to him so I just stole the spares off’n a couple of other officers’ Broncos.”

  While I washed our glasses and wiped down the surfaces, he swept the floor.

  “You’re right handy around the house,” I commented, spreading the dish towel to dry over the drainer.

  “Never been too hung up about the difference between women’s work and men’s,” he said with an easy smile. “Not since I learned about oysters.”

  “What about oysters?” I asked suspiciously.

  “They flip-flop back and forth on their gender, depending on who’s on top. Grow the lady on top of the gentleman, and a few months later, he’ll be female, she’ll be male and they’ll still get baby oysters.”

  “You’re making that up,” I told him.

  “There’s a field guide to seashells in the living room,” he said. “If you don’t believe me, go check it out.”

  I went and found the book and looked up oysters. After a paragraph or two detailing how oysters grow in the marshes and mud flats of intertidal zones where water movement is gentle, the entry finally got down to their sex life. Guess what?

  “You sure you don’t want to stay on down over the weekend?” he asked.

  “Positive. Not that it hasn’t been fun.”

  He gave me a considering look.

  “Forget it,” I told him. “We’re not oysters.”

  I went to bed.

  Alone.

  • • •

  Along about two A.M., I woke up thirsty from the anchovies and tiptoed out to the kitchen for a drink of water.

  And realized that thirst wasn’t what had waked me.

  Kidd Chapin was a dark shape at the back window and I saw him motion for silence through the faint reflected light from up at the store. Outside, a light rain was still falling. The wet live oaks swayed in a strong southwest wind and made moving shadows everywhere. I could hear low waves breaking upon the sand; and every fifteen seconds, a faint gleam from the lighthouse swept through the window over on the east side.

  I stood on tiptoe to peer over Kidd’s shoulder, past the bushes, to the road, and whispered in his ear, “What are we looking at?”

  “I’m not sure. I went to the bathroom about ten minutes ago and happened to look out and see somebody coming up from the water.”

  “Fishermen use the path all times of the night and day,” I told him, “depending on what’s running and how the wind’s blowing or—”

  “I know about the wind and spring tides, Ms. Judge,” he reminded me.

  “Sorry.”

  “Besides, he didn’t walk straight on up the path and down the road like a waterman. He kept so far in the shadows I never did get a clear look. In fact if it weren’t that you never see any blacks on the island, I couldn’t know if he was black or white. He slipped through those bushes and on across the road and now I don’t see him anymore.”

  “What’d he have on?”

  “I don’t know. It was all dark. Probably a jacket with a hood on it.”

  “Maybe you ought to call Marvin Willitt,” I said.

  “What for?”

  “You just said—”

  “Yeah, and I tell Marvin Willitt where I am and half of Harkers Island’ll know it by daybreak. And what if it’s somebody only just out cheating on his wife, trying not to be seen by her husband?

  “‘Only just out cheating on his wife?’” I couldn’t help the snide acid.

  “Hey, I’m not condoning it, just recognizing the facts, ma’am.”

  He stepped back from the window as I opened the refrigerator and squinted against the sudden bright light. “You want a glass of tomato juice?”

  “Okay.”

  We took our glasses back toward the unlit living room. A stiff April wind was pourin
g through the south windows straight off the water, thick with rain and salt and funky seaside odors. I shivered in my thin gown.

  “Aw, don’t go back to bed yet,” said Kidd. “Is it too cold for you? I’ll put the windows down.”

  “No, I like it, but I have to put on something warmer.”

  “My sleeping bag zips open to a double comforter,” he offered and I saw white teeth flash in the near darkness.

  “I’d hate for you to disfurnish yourself,” I said dryly and went into my room to slip on a fleecy sweatshirt and slippers and to lay hands on a comforter of my own.

  As I pulled the shirt over my head, I noticed through the window a flicker of light over at Andy’s house. I quickly stuffed my gown inside a pair of warm-up pants, kicked off the slippers and pulled on sneakers, then hurried out to Kidd.

  “It’s Andy Bynum’s house,” I said. “The man that was killed Sunday? Somebody’s sneaking around his house.”

  “Hey, wait a minute!” he rasped as I slid open the door. “Where do you think you’re—”

  “It’s okay,” I assure him, jingling my car keys. “I’ve got a gun in my trunk, remember?”

  He grabbed my arm before I stepped off the porch into the rain and held me while he crammed his feet in his own shoes. “Now listen up, Ms. Judge—no guns. You stay here and I’ll go—”

  I yanked my arm free with a low snarl. “I’ve got a better idea, Officer Chapin. You stay here and call Marvin Willitt and I’ll go.”

  “Or,” he amended, “we can go together, only no gun, okay?”

  I nodded and we set off through the bushes. Between the security light near Mark’s house and the lights up at the store, we didn’t need a flashlight to see where we were going, but we were keeping to the shadows as much as possible ourselves and there was a certain amount of stumbling so that we wound up running across the rain-slick road hand in hand, then melted into the bushes beneath the front windows of Andy Bynum’s house.

  Unlike Sue and Carl’s little yellow clapboard vacation cottage, this was a year-round brick home, solid and comfortable, with blinds and drapes at all the windows. Yet the window of the front door was uncurtained and we could see the glow of a moving flashlight inside.