Cape Cod caper

by Margot Arnold

  She searched anxiously through the mist for the sign that a hasty glance at Zebediah's strange instructions informed her should be fast appearing. It loomed large and green at her on the right and she had to brake abruptly to make the sharp turn off on to Quaker Meeting House Road. The road beyond was narrow and twisty, and she went even slower until the welcome sign for 6A swam whitely out of the mist. "Turn right for two miles," she murmured automatically to herself, and crept forward hunched over the steering wheel like a mouse-colored vulture. A gaggle of white frame houses appeared out of the mist to her right, then suddenly gas pumps and a store to her left. "Chase's Variety Store," she announced in triumph. "I made it! Zebediah, here I come, wherever you are!"

  CHAPTER 2

  Inside the store a large, broad-shouldered man with a heavy-jowled, doleful face stood stolidly behind the cash register. At the sight of him Penny was overwhelmed by a new wave of shyness about her strange errand. "I wonder if you could help me," she began hesitantly. "My name is Penelope Spring and I'm looking for the house of Zebediah Grange. Could you direct me there, please?"

  The dark brown eyes opened a shade wider under the heavy lids, but there was no change in the sad, basset-hound-like expression. "Oh, yes," he growled in a deep voice, "he's been expecting you. Albert!" The sudden stentorian roar made Penny jump backward like a startled fawn, but it was immediate in its results. A tow-headed, long-haired youth stuck his head through a side door. "Yes?"

  "The lady for Zeb Grange—would you take her down?"

  "Oh ... O.K. This green car yours?" the young man demanded with sudden interest, and the head disappeared.

  Penny's stomach gave her a reminding growl. "Just a minute!" she called anxiously; then to the large man, "Really, I did not mean to trouble you—if you'd just tell me the way."

  "You'd never find it," he said in a comforting voice. "Albert'll have you there in a jiffy."

  Her eyes roved desperately arovmd the crowded shelves. "Do you have any sandwiches?"

  He shook his head. "Could sell you a loaf and some cold cuts though."

  A shout came out of the mist. "She coming?"

  "Oh, it doesn't matter," Penny muttered. She grabbed up a bag of potato chips and a packet of Twinkies from the counter. "I'll just take these, and thank you very much."

  She paid and scurried out to find the youth already ensconced in the driver's seat of Everett's car, an expression of near rapture on the young, pimply face.

  "Hop in," he urged, and, when she had, gunned the engine and took off at a speed that almost took her breath away. She crammed a Twinkie into her mouth to calm herself and offered one to her chauffeur with mute appeal. "Bad for my acne," he shouted cheerfully over the roar of the engine and zoomed left onto a narrow strip of tarmac, where they bumped over some old railroad tracks. There was water on both sides of them now. "Is that the Bay?" Penny choked through a mouthful of Twinkie.

  "No, the cranberry' bogs. Flooded 'em early this year. It's going to be a terrible winter, they say," he roared gleefully as he shifted to a higher gear and screamed off the tarmac onto a dirt road that immediately plunged amid thick trees. They emerged from the trees into a cleared area in the middle of which on a slight rise stood a house that, with the exception of a deep front porch, looked exactly like a barn. "Here we are," said her guide, and brought the car to a shuddering halt.

  A sudden thought struck Penny. "How are you going to get back?" He emerged somewhat reluctantly from the front seat. "Oh, I'll walk—it's not far on foot and there's not much doing at the store this time of year." He took a last wistful look at the Triumph. "Nice little car that—well, I'll be seeing you!" and he strode off, his hands in his pockets and whistling jauntily, before Penny could decide whether or not she should offer him a tip. "Thank you very much," she called after his retreating back, and was rewarded by a raised hand, though he did not bother to turn around.

  She turned toward the silent, barnlike house, misgivings flooding back to her. A battered Chevy pickup stood to one side of it, and far to the left amid the trees she could make out the faded shingles of what looked like another barn. When the whistling of her guide had died away there was an absolute silence in the glare; not the chirp of a bird or the rustle of a leaf disturbed the silent blanketing of the mist. Suddenly the front door of the house opened with the sound of a pistol shot and a tall figure stood framed in it. "Thank God you've come, thank God!" it said, and there was a quaver in the harsh voice.

  Zebediah Grange came slowly out onto the deep porch and Penny saw with something akin to horror that the tall figure of her remembrance had been pinched and mangled as if in some giant vise; the whole of the left side was crushed and diminished. His left leg dragged as he walked, and as he came toward her she saw with a qualm of revulsion that his left arm ended in a hook. His hair was still wiry but was a grizzled white, and the face beneath it was weather-beaten and seamed by deep lines that bespoke a life lived in the open. He towered over her and the dark eyes burned down with the same remembered intensity, but in their depths Penny saw emotions which again sent prickles of unease racing up and down her spine; she saw fear there, and the glazed, abstracted look of a man almost at his wit's end.

  "I came as soon as I got your message," she said lamely. "You sounded so urgent. What's wrong, Zebediah?"

  He appeared not to hear but seized her hand with his good right one in a bone-crushing grip. "I'll get a spade and we'll go right to the site," he said. "I can explain nothing until you have seen for yourself."

  Penny felt it was time to assert herself. "Now. look, Zeb, I've just had a long drive down from Boston, I've missed my lunch, I need a drink, and I need to use your bathroom. So, first things first!"

  He frowned. "There is no alcohol in the house, I do not drink—but come along!" There was an edge of impatience on the rasping voice.

  "Coffee'd be fine," she persisted, as she followed him across the porch into the narrow hallway. The first thing she saw on the hall table was a telephone and her sense of exasperated puzzlement grew. "The bathroom is there"—he indicated a door under the stairway that ran up to the left of the hall—"I'll go put some water on," and scurried with his crablike gait into the small dining room that lay at the end of the hallway.

  Penny freshened up and emerged, still wondering to herself why he had gone through all the rigmarole of the telegrams when a simple telephone call would have sufficed. "Where are you?" she called. A muffled shout came from beyond the dining room and she went through it to see him standing before the stove La a small, square kitchen to the right. "Be right with you!" he trumpeted. He emerged with a small jar of instant coffee, a carton of milk, a sugar bowl and the steaming kettle. A single mug stood on the dining room table, and he plonked the rest beside it. "Help yourself," he said ungraciously.

  She sat down, feeling uncomfortable, made the coffee and groped for another Twinkle. "Won't you join me?" she offered, trying not to sound sarcastic. Again he shook his head impatiently and shuffled up and down the room. With a mental shrug she took a sip of the scalding coffee—the Twinkles had given her a fierce thirst. "Well now, what is this all about?" she said, trying not to look at the hook on his shattered arm, which he was now flexing up and down in a curious manner.

  "It must wait until you see for yourself," he rasped. "As soon as you're finished we will go to the site I've been excavating."

  "You mean this is something to do with archeology?" She could hardly believe her ears.

  He ignored her question but seized a picture from the top of an old-fashioned tallboy and thrust it toward her. "What does the name Rinaldo Dimola mean to you?" he asked hoarsely.

  It did not mean a thing to Penny, but she felt something was expected of her. "Mafia?" she hazarded.

  A look of offended rage suffused the weather-beaten face and he seemed to swell. "Certainly not" he rapped. "Rinaldo Dimola is one of the great engineers, one of the great men of our time. This is Dimola land you're on, he owns most of Masuit. Di
mola Enterprises is one of the great conglomerates of America—surely you must have heard of it!" He sounded outraged. "This is Rinaldo Dimola"—he thrust the photo into her hands—"who not only saved my life at the accident but has been my savior ever since. I owe everything I have and am to him."

  As he rhapsodized on about Dimola and his exploits Penny dutifully gazed at the picture, which showed two grinning men in the hard hats of construction workers. The one on the left was a younger Zeb, the one on the right obviously Rinaldo: a big man, as tall as Zeb but broad and burly, the arm around Zeb's shoulder like a young oak tree; a broad strong face that seemed vaguely familiar to her, the grin somewhat wolfish, due, she supposed, to the "wolf canine which showed prominently in the picture on the left side of his mouth and which gave the whole face a predatory look. She could well believe that Dimola was a man to be reckoned with and a man who had created a multimillion-dollar empire.

  Since Zeb showed no sign of slackening his paean of praise, she hastily helped herself to another cup of coffee and tried to follow his tangled narrative. A feeling of pity for him welled up in her as he talked of the accident: a bulldozer had crushed him in a gravel slide and Dimola had pulled him free. "He wouldn't let them take my leg—he fought them all, the doctors, everyone, but he couldn't save my arm. Not but what he got me the best artificial one money can buy," he added with pride. The spate suddenly dried up. "You ready yet?" he said roughly. "Oh yes." She jumped up and followed his shambling form out to the pickup, in the back of which she saw a jumble of digging tools. They set off on the same dirt track she had come in on, but about half a mile into the trees turned left on a still narrower and bumpier one. Zeb had lapsed into a brooding silence, which further irritated Penny; for a man who had been so desperate to get hold of her he certainly was not acting very pleased to see her, so she felt a further explanation was due. "You said you knew all about me and yet we've been out of touch for thirty years. How come?" she demanded.

  He did not look at her. "Ann Langley." "Ann! Is she here?" Penny was astounded. He nodded, not taking his eyes off the road. "Works for Rinaldo at the mansion."

  The affair was becoming more bizarre by the minute. Ann Langley had been one of Toby's most promising students just five years ago, and Penny had been very taken with her. Lovely to look at, highly intelligent, very English. Penny remembered she had tried to talk her out of a liaison with an American Rhodes Scholar but had not succeeded, and Ann had disappeared directly after graduation. She had had a couple of Christmas cards from her, then silence —a not unusual state of affairs with old students. But to find her in this unlikely spot! "What is this site then?" she demanded, "an Indian Tutankhamen's tomb?"

  The pickup ground to a stop before a barbed wire gate which bore a large No trespassing sign. Zeb got out and took a spade out of the back of the truck before unlocking the gate. "It's an Indian encampment and burial ground, about three to four hundred years old," he said, "but we've had a bit of trouble with the Indians over it."

  "Indian trouble? Here on the Cape!" Penny was incredulous.

  "There's a reservation in Mashpee—Wampanoags—and with all this Indian rights business that's been fashionable the past few years they had to put their two cents worth in over this." His tone was bitter. "I've been digging this site by myself for the past ten years, and I've been as careful as anything, but nothing seems to please 'em..." He led her into a small valley which was pockmarked with filled-in trenches. "I've been particularly careful about the burials, knowing how the Indians feel—just digging out and recording what's in the burial and filling in again. When I came here just the other day I saw somebody had been at one of the graves—they lie right along that slope there, see—and I thought maybe some damn pot hunter had been sniffing about for relics. It was then that I found it..." He gave her a haunted, fearful look. "Sit down somewhere while I dig it out to show you—I won't be long."

  "Can't I help?" Penny asked uncomfortably.

  "No!" The monosyllable almost exploded out of him."Time enough for that when you see what it is. It's then I'm going to need your help."

  She sat down and marveled to herself at the dexterity with which he clipped his hook onto the shaft of the spade, wielding the handle with his right hand and burrowing into the loose earth of the rectangular grave for all the world like a dog going after a bone. How strange he was! He obviously was not poor; the workman's shirt he was wearing was a Hudson Bay wool of the finest quality, the heavy corduroy pants, though faded and work-stained, of good cut and material. Since he paid no further attention to her she turned to her surroundings.

  The Indians had known what they were about in choosing this place, she thought. Above the little valley a sharp breeze was now bending the pines and shredding the sea fog into long white strands, but here all was calm, cozy and protected—hidden. Piles of bleached and broken clam, oyster and scallop shells indicated that the dietary tastes of the ancient Cape dwellers were the same as their modern counterparts. Reminded of her own hunger, she opened the packet of potato chips and furtively crunched under cover of the spade's monotonous rhythm, which seemed to be picking up impetus as Zeb descended into the grave.

  She tried to visualize the little valley as it had been when it was a busy Indian encampment, but, bored with this after a while, got up stiffly and wandered over toward the open grave. The sound of the spade had stopped and she reached the edge to see Zeb scrabbling frantically at the bottom with his one good hand. She had just a glimpse of a moldering skull, a few beads and an Indian pot before he rose to his feet and shrank back from her with a startled cry. His face was running with sweat and there was stark fear in his eyes. Without a word he scrambled out of the grave and began spading back the earth at a furious pace,

  "Zeb, wait! What on earth is the matter? What did you want me to see?"

  The fear-crazed eyes turned to hers. "Nothing—it's too late," he panted, and his eyes swept upward, scanning the mist-shrouded trees in panic. Penny felt the fear reach out and touch her and shivered. "In heaven's name!" she cried, "what are you so afraid of, Zeb? I came here to help! Tell me!"

  "I can't," he panted. "Not now. It is too dangerous. I should never have brought you here. You must go. Go at once." He flung the spade down in the partially filled grave and seized her by the arm. "I'll take you back to your car and you must get away."

  He towed her, despite her protests, back to the pickup and almost hurled her inside; then they sped up to the silent glade, where he forced her into her own car. Penny was so shocked and dazed by his sudden violence that she could scarcely think. When he slammed the door of the Triumph he leaned toward her and hissed, "Go! And don't come back. Forget all this and everything I've said. Forget me. It is the only way." And without another word he scuttled into the house and slammed the door.

  Dazedly, Penny found her way back to the main road, but the farther she drove and calm returned the angrier she grew. By the time she reached Logan airport she was almost apoplectic with fury. She was still boiling when she phoned John Everett to tell him where to pick up the Triumph, and to his anxious inquiry she snarled, "It was a complete waste of my time and your gas. The man was as mad as a hatter."

  But when her terror died the puzzlement returned. What on earth was it all about? She would simply have to talk it all over with Toby.

  "Talking it over with Toby" had been one of the chief joys and supports of her life for the past twenty-odd years. Tobias Glendower, now Sir Tobias Glendower, unlike Penny, had not been born to the academic world—he had taken refuge in it. Son of a millionaire industrialist father whose overpowering personality and dominating interests had left a permanent mark on those about him, Toby had escaped into the world of the past where he was completely happy. He was brilliant, very eccentric, and undoubtedly drank too much, but all these things the world readily forgave because he was also so very rich. He got on well enough with his fellow man but had a profound suspicion of the female of the species—with one exception: Penny
. Their inseparability was one of the continuing themes of wonder and speculation among the student body of Oxford; and the more irreverent of them, seeing his tall, spindly figure hunching along beside her short, dumpy one, had summed it all up by the affectionate label, "The Long and Short of It All." Separate they were outstanding; together they were formidable.

  As soon as Penny got back to Oxford she related the whole odd episode to Toby, who listened intently, his small, knoblike head wreathed in clouds of pungent tobacco smoke. "What do you make of it?" she concluded.

  He carefully knocked out his pipe and chuckled. "Well, with the facts at hand, precious little, except for the obvious point that your ex-boyfriend is a first-class eccentric. But from what you've told me I'd say (a) that he expected to find something in that grave that had evidently been removed and (b) that that something was connected with the man to whom he is so fanatically attached—what's his name? Dimola? Whatever it was, I think you are well out of it, Penny, and, knowing your propensity for getting into hot water, my best advice is: forget the whole thing."

  "I suppose so," she sighed, but in her heart she had the uneasy feeling that far from being an end the strange encounter had only been a beginning.

  CHAPTER 3

  Robert Dyke was happy and at peace with the world; following a long spell of unemployment after graduation from high school and a horrendous winter, this was his first day on his first job and it was a glorious one. There was warmth in the March sun, a softness to the breeze that blew in off Massachusetts Bay, the sky was a cloudless blue and a million diamonds winked at him from the newly drained cranberry bogs on either side. He walked along the embankment of the old railroad track with its rusty rails and rotting ties with gratitude in his heart for the town fathers, who had revived that perennial hare of railway service to the Cape and so had decreed yet another feasibility study. It did not concern Robert Dyke that this current study probably would be shelved like all the rest. He had been hired to examine the state of the roadbed of the disused railroad and, being a very conscientious young man, was probing the splintered ties with a borrowed probe, noting the condition of the rusty rails, and diligently writing down the details of their generally sad state in a little notebook. Just to be doing something at long last was a joy to his heart, and to be doing it outdoors on a day like this was very heaven. The breeze ruffled his curly black hair and touched with gentle fingers the ingenuous, snub-nosed face, which—to his private despair—looked younger than his nineteen years. Maybe, he thought, if I do a good enough job on this, they'll give me a more permanent type job, something to tide me over until I can save enough to go to college.