Dying for Murder

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  He swivelled his head to look at me, a little dimple in his left cheek twitching.

  “Is that why she hadn’t met Wyatt?” I asked.

  Something in Darcy’s face vied for control but lost, and he rearranged his face into a look of pure neutrality. Intrigued, I waited.

  “You could say that,” he finally said.

  Darcy hauled out all my equipment and the two of us spent some time making sure it was working properly. I felt that little twinge of excitement I always get just before I go out into the field. Research is so stimulating because you are testing the unknown to see if your theory works or doesn’t work. The collection of raw data is exciting. Photographers know the feeling. The summer I stumbled across a body in the wilderness my brother Ryan had been so transported by his craft that he hadn’t noticed the lime green insect he was photographing was perched on a dead man’s body. You take your photos, hundreds of them, and then you go through them and find the gems. Only in my case it was getting the birdsong recordings back to the lab, to a machine that would turn the song into symbols on a page. These would then be analyzed to determine if my theory was supported by the data. It was like getting something for free — taking it from nature without leaving a trace — and using it as a palette for my research. I could do field work forever.

  Darcy broke into my thoughts and led me back down the long corridor, every door open to the labs beyond. When I commented about it to Darcy he said, “Nobody locks anything around here. That’s why the missing vial of vaccine is such a concern. We work on an honour system and have never had any problems until now. And Wyatt isn’t helping much — he’s being pretty vague about what vial and when. It can’t possibly affect his work any, he has extra vaccine, so I guess Stacey’s doing damage control for the theft itself, if it is a theft.” He paused. “I wish she’d let me do the investigating — she’s so weak after the flu — but she’d have none of it when I suggested it.”

  As we passed one of the labs a voice called out, “Darce?”

  Darcy stopped and walked through the open door. I followed behind. Sam was standing amid a bunch of esoteric looking machinery, test tubes, and vials of all descriptions. He handed Darcy a sealed envelope and said, “Would you mind taking that to Stacey, please? It’s the diagram she wanted. And she wants it yesterday.”

  Darcy took the envelope and turned to look at me. “Sam here is our resident forensics man when he isn’t batman.” I think I was supposed to laugh at that last reference, but Sam rolled up his eyes and I figured he’d heard the joke a million times. Darcy slapped the envelope in his hand and said, “Anything interesting?”

  Sam shook his head, but there was a glint in his eye as he said, “Only to Stacey.” He smiled then and turned to me and said, “I’ll be mist netting some bats tonight. If you see Martha would you ask her if she’d like to come? You are welcome too, of course, seeing as how you were unlucky this morning.”

  “Does Stacey often ask you to do forensics?” I asked, ignoring his invitation in the haste to get my question out. He was momentarily disconcerted and said no, drawing it out like pull taffy. It was an invitation to elaborate on why I had asked in the first place. Since I wasn’t really sure why, I changed the subject back to mist netting and begged off Sam’s invitation, citing Stacey’s invitation.

  As Sam turned back to his work I said, “Is there a map of everyone’s study sites so I don’t traipse through them?”

  Sam smiled. “Ah, you’ve been talking to Stacey, I see.”

  I didn’t say anything. He and Darcy took me down the hall and into what had to be the biologists’ den, their hangout — big fluffy sofas, recliners, and a large TV set, all surrounded by windows looking out over the forest of live oak. The map was pinned on the wall and showed the island in great detail. What struck me most was just how small the island was and how big the neighbouring island, to which it was almost adjoined, was. Everybody’s study site was on the map. It was meticulously done and easy to see at a glance where everybody was.

  Darcy said, “You’ll be mostly up at the north end of the island, the interior parts. The south end is mostly impenetrable.” He whisked a sheet of acetate off a nearby desk and laid it over the map at the north end. He used green putty to secure it and then took a black marker and outlined my study site, just like that, even going so far as to pinpoint where he had seen some actual male Indigo Buntings singing. I was itching to get started right away, but it was still way too hot for the birds to be singing their courting songs with any kind of gusto.

  I left Darcy and Sam and went back to the cabin to double check the equipment and get all my gear ready. It was such a heady feeling! When I was satisfied that everything was working I took a tour around the clearing. Basically it was a network of paths through the palmetto and live oak, meandering from the various cabins and widening into a sandy area the size of a four-car garage, mostly covered in live oak leaves, at the base of the stairs to the mess. Five or six ATVs were parked near the stairs and someone was tinkering with one of them. There was a lot of cursing going on and I sauntered over to see what was happening. The man with the shaggy beard, Trevor, who had piloted our boat, was sitting knee-deep in tools and bits of vehicle. He looked up and caught my eye, his scowl slowly softening. “These damn machines are so temperamental. They are always and perpetually sick, which makes me sick.” He looked sick too — his moth-eaten beard partially hid a sallow complexion and sunken eyes that screamed out at me, but I wasn’t sure what they were trying to say.

  I looked at the array of vehicles and asked him if I would be able to use one of them to get to my study site — which was quite far up the island.

  “Stacey didn’t tell you which one you could use?” He spat out Stacey’s name as if he was getting rid of something unpalatable.

  I shook my head.

  “That one over there — the red three wheeler. It’s all yours. Key’s in the ignition, gas tank is full. Just hold the throttle and she’ll be fine. But be kind to her. She’s really old.” I hadn’t heard of a three wheeler in years and wasn’t even sure if they were still legal. I decided not to ask.

  “Are you a mechanic?” I asked instead, looking at all his tools.

  “Hah! Me, a mechanic? Only by happenstance.” He scowled. “No one else around here can fix these hunks of junk.”

  “Don’t let him fool you.” The voice came from behind me, and we both turned. She stood there like a model, totally at ease with every part of her body, her beauty more related to how she held herself and the confidence she exuded than anything else. What do they say when a woman has “it,” that something you cannot learn. Well, this woman had it in spades.

  “He’s really a very good mechanic,” she said, but there was a hard edge to her tone as she offered her hand to me. Her luxuriant, jet-black, curly hair shone in the sun as it cascaded down around her shoulders and her mahogany eyes had such depth of colour that they were mesmerizing. “I’m Jayne. Who might you be?”

  I took her hand and introduced myself. Jayne turned back to the bearded man and said, “Trevor’s our Jack of all trades. When he’s not a mechanic he captains our ferries, when he’s not captaining our ferries he’s captaining a shrimp boat, and when he’s not doing that he’s the local taxi on the island. Isn’t that right, Trevor?” Did I detect a note of sarcasm in her voice?

  Trevor scowled again and returned to his work as Jayne bent down and picked up some luggage from a pile dumped behind one of the ATVs. She was more than happy to accept when I offered to help and she led me down one of the palmetto-invested trails to a cabin that looked just like mine. Except it appeared that Jayne had it all to herself.

  “Trevor scowls rather a lot,” I said by way of conversation, realizing too late that it sounded like a rather leading question.

  “Only around me,” she said, and then added, “and Stacey, of course.” I didn’t see any “of course” about it and he’d scowled at me and I said so.

  She smiled. “I
t’ll take you awhile to get the hang of the place,” was all she said. I changed topics as I helped her carry her luggage into the cabin.

  “You’re the turtle lady.”

  She laughed. “My pictures give me away?” she asked and flung her arm to take in dozens of pictures of sea turtles gracing every inch of her walls.

  I laughed in return.

  “I’ve been studying turtles of one kind or another since I was a little girl. They fascinate me. They are so ancient and have survived for millions of years. They swam the same seas as the dinosaurs. We can’t even come close to saying that about ourselves, and yet here we are endangering sea turtles for the sake of a shrimp cocktail or a bowl of soup. It’s criminal but the courts don’t seem to really know that yet.”

  She paused and threw me a small metal ring with a removable rubber cap. I turned it over in my hand, trying to figure out what it was. I looked up at her and shrugged. She smiled and took the ring and cap from me and pulled the cap off. The brass ring was quite a bit smaller than a dime and the rubber cap was essentially another ring slightly smaller with a hunk of black rubber glued to it. She held up the ring and said, “I’ve done quite a few experiments over the years on the visual orientation of sea turtle hatchlings. It is quite extraordinary that the hatchlings, the size of a plum but flatter, come up out of a dark nest into a dark night and yet they make their way unerringly to the sea.” She took the ring back from me. “It’s really cool. I mean how do they manage to find the sea when they are so tiny that one dune is like Everest to them? At their level, which is about half an inch above the ground, they can’t even see the sea. The literature has pretty much confirmed that they are programmed to head toward the brightest horizon. But how are they programmed and when does the switch turn on and turn off — because it has to turn off or sea turtles would never come ashore to lay their eggs, they would always be swimming toward the brightest horizon, which is out to sea.”

  She picked up a little rubber sea turtle hatchling from her bedside table and fitted the brass ring over one of its eyes.

  “They’re goggles,” she said. “I glue the brass ring over the eye and then I can use the cap to blind one eye or both or change the rubber for colour filters.”

  I tried not to laugh but I couldn’t help smiling. The image it conjured up in my mind was hilarious.

  “I know,” she said. “Everybody laughs. It is funny and they do look ludicrous when they are wearing them, but it is harmless to the turtles. The glue peels off and I release them to the sea after any experiments. You wouldn’t believe how many people want to interview me about my bespectacled turtles. They are much more interested in that than in my nest predation studies.”

  I rose to the bait. “Which are?”

  “Oh, you know. I check each nest in our little hatchery here after it has come up and analyze the contents for diseased or depredated eggs, et cetera.”

  “You have a hatchery on the island?” I asked, surprised and not all that interested in the contents of an old nest. I hadn’t read anything about the hatchery and no one had mentioned it.

  “Well, it’s really a tiny hatchery. Most of the nests laid by the females we leave in place now, but it used to be that every nest that was laid was dug up and transferred to a fenced-in area so that the feral pigs and other animals didn’t gorge themselves. Now we only dig up a few nests for research purposes. We get the odd photographer too who wants to film a nest erupting. It’s quite a sight. You should sit up one night — they only come up at night — and see if you get lucky.”

  “So you did your Ph.D. on sea turtles?”

  She grunted.

  “Where did you do it? What university?”

  She moved suddenly and tripped over a pair of shoes on the floor. After I made the motions of helping her up I tried to take up where we left off, but she was having none of it. The moment was lost.

  chapter seven

  During lunch we all listened to the radio and news of Hurricane Chase. It had pummelled the DR and Haiti and was barrelling down on the eastern seaboard of the United States — touchdown estimated at Charleston, South Carolina. We were right in its path unless some unforeseen phenomenon steered it away. As a result we were on alert for evacuation within twenty-four hours. It was frustrating, exciting, and a bit frightening, all at the same time. Now that I had seen the island and realized we were really only as high above sea level as the mercurial dunes that formed the island, it kind of hit home what sitting ducks we were. But nobody seemed too perturbed about it so I assumed everything was under control.

  Darcy and Trevor had boarded up all the windows in the mess and it was even more gloomy and oppressive in there now. After lunch, in the energy-draining heat of early afternoon, everyone disappeared or hung around in the lounge listening to news about the hurricane, reading books, or catching up on research. I chose the siesta in an effort to catch up on the sleep that Martha had stolen from me. I awoke in that nasty grogginess that seems to happen when you sleep out of turn. It was still drenchingly hot and I felt like a pancake, flat and sizzling. I looked at the clock on my bedside table. It was time to go in search of some buntings. I wondered where Martha was as I got my equipment together. I stuffed the recording paraphernalia into my packsack, hefted the parabola in my hands, and went off in search of my trusty steed. As Trevor had promised it was an old three-wheeler — an anachronism actually since three wheelers are no longer sold because they’re so tippy. I’d never ridden one before but I figured it couldn’t be much different from a motorcycle. There was no rack to put my parabola on, so I had to put it on my lap. She started like a dream but she stuttered and jerked as I backed her up. I was glad no one was watching as I finally got her turned around while gripping the parabola with my knees. It was awkward and I finally had to drive one-handed down the leaf-laden track to the island’s main artery — a wider leaf-laden track. I had the map in my pocket and a compass but I was pretty sure I knew where I was going, having studied the map earlier. Except when I got to the main line everything looked the same — a long tunnel through the oaks with many narrower tracks branching off. There were some quaint signs along the way and with their help I made it to the north end of the island where the forest thinned out, as if it had once been logged, and the territory began to look more like Indigo Bunting territory: open with good perching trees nearby. But it wasn’t big, and I began to worry about getting enough study subjects. I parked my three wheeler, got my equipment set up, earphones on, the electronic recorder slung over my left shoulder, the parabola hooked up to the electronic recorder and perched in my right hand. I took a GPS reading and moved down the trail slowly, listening to the birdsong of painted buntings, sparrows, hawks, and more. But no indigos. After half an hour of walking and stopping to listen I was starting to get discouraged. I had to wonder how all those biologists could sit in blinds for hours and hours. What was half an hour to that? And then I heard him, the lively, clear, complex notes of an Indigo Bunting. I turned on my recording gear and taped a bunch of his songs while I scanned the foliage to try and locate him, to see that beautiful brilliant indigo blue of his feathers. But he proved elusive. I took a GPS reading and walked on out of the range of the first little bunting, looking for a second.

  Two hours later I had two male buntings recorded, which I considered a good day’s work. But I was thoroughly lost. I’d parked my three wheeler on the main road but had somehow found my way onto a secondary road. I took out my GPS and started heading back when the trail I was on broke into a clearing with a sign that said LIGHTHOUSE ROAD and I could see the beach in the distance, behind the line of dunes. I looked at my watch. Still lots of time before the sun set, so I stashed all my equipment under a lofty live oak and made my way out into the dunes. The sun had lost its heat but the air was still and thick. When I meandered my way among the ten-foot dunes I saw a line of orange stakes circling several of the dunes that had some vegetation on them. I figured they had to be Stacey’s dunes and I loo
ked at them with some interest. How old were they? I wondered. Surely the life span of a dune on a barrier island had to be fleeting — unless of course vegetation took hold, as they had on these ones — they needed something to slow or stop the effects of the wind, which otherwise kept them in constant motion. I made a point of walking in the valleys of the dunes when I could, to keep my environmental footprint tiny — nothing quite as invasive as skidding down the face of a dune, bringing a cascade of sand with you. As I began to break out onto the beach above the high-tide line I could see the swells of the sea cresting over the shallow waters and crashing onto the beach. The water looked grey, leaden, greasy, as if it was gearing up for something — was this what a hurricane sea looked like in the days before the hurricane hit? There weren’t any shells on the beach as I headed toward the south end of the island, but I could see the tidal creek that separated Spaniel Island from its much bigger neighbour. It looked pretty benign — no sign of the current that had carried the spaniel and the little boy out to the sandbar. But then again the tide was coming in.

  I climbed the beach and found a nice spot to take a rest among the dunes. But after ten minutes I grew restless and got out my binoculars to survey what I could see of the beach. I jerked the binoculars back when movement caught my eye and watched as one, two, and then three horses moved into view from behind a dune, their tails flicking at the wind and their heads down, snuffling the vegetation at high tide mark. Wild horses conjure images of magnificent stallions with gleaming black coats, heads thrown back, reading the wind. These horses were more like ponies with dull coats and little pot bellies. The two other horses joined the first one and the three of them stood in a tableau of indecision, standing on the threshold of flight. And then I heard a soft thwip sound and one of the horses took off, followed immediately by the other two. I watched, mesmerized, as Wyatt and Rosemary appeared from behind a dune, a modified rifle still clutched in Wyatt’s hand. Rosemary looked up then and saw me and I heard my name riding the wind that had crept up. She waved at me even as Wyatt made an impatient gesture with his hand. Did I go and join them at Rosemary’s invitation or leave at Wyatt’s? What the hell. I wanted to watch their operation so I walked down the beach.