I looked up at Sam. He was shaking his head. When he saw me looking at him he said, “We are the single biggest predator of sea turtles.”
I waited for more but he bent down and freed one of the creature’s flippers from some seaweed. His hand gently touched a bright yellow tag attached to the flipper.
“One of ours,” he said and he got a pad of paper to write the number down. “God damn it.” He angrily stuffed the paper into his pocket and looked at me. “This is what happens when a loggerhead sea turtle meets the propeller blades of a boat. No competition. The turtle loses every time. They can’t win, what with the shrimping nets and the propeller blades, the odds are against them big time.”
Stacey, Jayne, now Sam on the one side. Trevor on the other. A lot of hot blood. Had any of it spilled over into Stacey’s death?
Sam didn’t say much as we drove down the beach, then headed up into the dunes and then down into the interior of the island. After the roar of the wind and the waves it was deathly quiet in the woods.
“I just have to check one of my roosts,” he said and swung the truck down a tiny trail that opened into a clearing. Sam pointed to an old wooden two-storey house. “The Amoses own this cottage and my bats roost in their attic. They want to exterminate them so I don’t have much longer to work with them.” He pointed off to my left. “That’s Stacey’s cottage.”
I turned to look through the woods at what looked like a tiny wooden cottage painted slate blue.
“Don’t know why she bought it,” he said as he got out of the Land Rover and pulled a backpack out of the back. “Except for the last five days she hardly ever used it. She was married to her job. Hated being away from it all. But then sometimes she’d drop everything and come to the cottage. Sort of like an escape, I guess, but a very expensive one.”
I looked up at the cottage, which was ninety percent window, and as I did someone came out of the front door. They were backlit and I had no idea who it was until Sam yelled, “Hey, Melanie! What are you doing here?” His voice was harsh and not at all friendly.
Just the question I would have asked. I kicked myself for not having secured the cottage as a secondary crime scene. But then, how could I have kept anyone away if they were really determined? Melanie came down the stairs, backpack over her shoulder, and said “Hi,” but I noticed she avoided answering Sam’s question.
“Can’t stay,” she said. “I’ve got a snake to follow.”
We watched as she walked down the pathway to Stacey’s cottage and out of sight.
“Where is her bike?” Sam asked.
Interesting question. Had she been sneaking about on foot, hoping to go unnoticed?
I looked back up at Stacey’s cottage and wondered what her last few days had been like. What had happened to her that had led to murder?
“What happened in Stacey’s last five days?” I said.
“Dunno.”
“I thought she had the flu.”
“That’s what she said she had, but there was some other reason why she wanted to disappear for a while.” He swung his backpack over one shoulder and had turned to go when I called him back.
I pulled his lab report out of my pocket and silently handed it to him.
“What were you analyzing when you got sugar?”
He took the piece of paper from me and scrutinized it for a long while, buying himself some time to respond.
“Just doodling around,” he said. “Wanted to know if I could still remember the diagram for sugar.”
Sam was a terrible liar. I snorted. He looked at me as if weighing his options.
“Okay. Okay,” he said. “Stacey asked me to analyze something for her and I did. That’s all.”
“And you had no idea what you were analyzing?”
Sam looked at me as if to size me up and then said, “Look, she wanted it kept secret. Asked me not to tell anyone.”
“But she is dead now. Surely she wouldn’t mind if you told me, especially if it catches her killer.”
Sam looked down at the ground and then back up at me. “It was Wyatt’s vaccine.” It took a bit of time to digest that.
“Wyatt’s vaccine is sugar?”
Sam was fiddling with the strap of his backpack. “It’s just a placebo. A useless fucking placebo.”
chapter fourteen
Sam dropped me off at the research station where I hightailed it up to the mess for something to eat for lunch. Everybody was long gone but there was still some cold toast and warm milk. I helped myself and went and sat at a table that, if the windows had not been boarded up, would have overlooked the seaward dunes. As I pulled back my chair I noticed some file folders stacked on the chair beside mine. Someone must have sat where I was sitting, dumped them on the next chair while they were eating, and then forgotten them. I reached over and picked them up — two in all. They were personnel files stamped with OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR — Stacey. My interest was piqued. I picked up the first of the folders and gave it a cursory look — Melanie. There was a copy of her resume and a letter offering her a research position at the station, along with two photos, one black and white that had seen better days and one colour that was dog-eared. In both photos she looked out at the photographer with wary eyes, as if she was afraid her soul was being stolen, but there was something about the photos that made me wonder. The second folder was Sam’s. As I was rifling through it I noticed there was a third file folder stuck inside as if by accident — Jayne’s.
I thought I heard a door hinge squeak but when I looked up no one was there. I realized I was curious about who would come back for the folders and where they had got them. My guess was Darcy, since he had access to Stacey’s files, but why would he be interested in these?
This time the squeak of the door resulted in someone being there. Not Darcy. Melanie. She stared straight at me, a look of confusion and what appeared to be annoyance flitting across her face.
I smiled at her. “Looking for these?” I asked and brandished the three folders at her.
She hesitated a moment and then said, “Pardon?”
I flapped the folders in her face. “Missing these?”
“What are they?” she said, remaining remarkably calm.
“I thought you might be able to tell me.”
“I don’t know what they are so how can I tell you?”
She was lying. I could tell by the set of her jaw and the fact that she refused to look me in the eye. Her glance veered off my left shoulder. I figured she and Sam were made for each other. They were both terrible liars.
“How did you get your research position here?”
She was taken off guard. “Stacey hired me.”
“Did you know her?”
“Yes, but only by reputation.”
“So you just applied and hoped for the best. After all, she must get hundreds of applications a year for these research positions. You were lucky.”
“Not really. She came looking for me.” Melanie said this with some pride, her hand flicking her blue hair out of her eyes.
“She came looking for you?” I realized it might sound like an insult so I added, “That’s odd,” which made it sound worse.
Melanie looked momentarily discomfited and I thought I saw fear in the look she gave me, but maybe not because she continued. “Stacey wanted someone with a solid research proposal and the ability to help around the station when needed. I had the best resume.”
“But I thought you said —”
“Stacey got Darcy to ask me to submit my resume.”
“But how did she know about you?”
Melanie looked away in confusion and, before I could pursue my line of questioning further, the screen door squeaked open and in popped Martha. When she spied me she headed in my direction and Melanie hastily retreated, but not before I caught her glancing furtively at the file folders. Had she filched them from Stacey’s cottage?
“Hi there, stranger. You didn’t come back and wake me up,” said Martha in
a slightly accusatory tone.
“I was otherwise occupied,” I said.
Martha rolled her eyes, and then narrowed them as she pulled out a chair beside me. “Trevor said something about a fire at the lighthouse and that you were there.”
“Trapped inside is more like it.”
I told Martha all that had happened at the lighthouse without embellishing it too much but it didn’t help. She still got upset.
“You mean you actually saw somebody slinking around the lighthouse?”
“No, but I heard them and I heard them drive away.”
“Jesus, Cordi, you could have been killed.”
But I shook my head. “I don’t think so. The fire was set in a metal container and the only other wood was the door. The fire would have burned itself out before doing me any damage.”
“But the vine could have broken.”
“Yeah, that was a bit stupid. I should have just waited.”
“So what are you saying?”
“That someone was trying to scare either me or Jayne.”
“Jayne? What does she have to do with it?”
“I was on her ATV. You can’t miss it with the big turtle painted on it. Someone could have mistaken me for her.”
“Or not.”
“There’s that too,” I said. “Someone could be trying to scare me off the case.”
“You mean you’re getting too close to something?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know what. I mean I’ve discovered that Stacey and Jayne hate what Trevor does for a living and the massacre of turtles it causes.”
I told Martha about Stacey being an observer and she and Jayne’s fervent support of sea turtles.
“Trevor could have killed Stacey and he was in the area of the lighthouse when the fire broke out.”
“What else?”
“There’s something that happened around the time that Stacey became director and Jayne stepped down.”
“Stacey was murdered for getting the job?”
“Oh c’mon, Martha,” I said. “Who would murder for that?” But still — I found myself wondering the same thing.
Darcy interrupted Martha and me as we sat at the table. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the table.
“The police called. Said the earliest they could come was day after tomorrow.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah I thought it was a bit late too, but they said the sea swells won’t abate for a while and they are still busy with the devastation there. He says we’re lucky the hurricane did an end run around us and blasted the mainland. Quite an opinionated guy he is. He said ‘What’s a barrier island useful for if it can’t slow down a hurricane for the mainland?’” He smiled wryly.
“You could have told me that you didn’t tell them we had moved Stacey,” he added.
Oh boy.
“Detective Kennedy was very angry. It was after that that he said he couldn’t come for a couple of days. Contaminated crime scene he called it. Made it sound as though it was no longer a priority. He would have preferred it if we had just let her rot. How callous is that?”
When I didn’t say anything he said, “Just exactly what did you tell him?”
“What we knew at the time. That she’d been tied up and suffocated. He wasn’t exactly paying close attention, what with the hurricane and all.”
Darcy pushed himself away from the table and without looking me in the eye said, “I understand you got trapped in the lighthouse and someone lit a fire.”
“She could have been killed!” said Martha.
“I doubt that,” said Darcy, brushing off my escape like a fly, but I couldn’t help notice that he had turned white. “Nothing to burn in that lighthouse, but why someone would want to torch the garbage defies reason.”
“Cordi thinks it was someone after Jayne,” said Martha.
Darcy’s jaw dropped. “Are you saying you think this was deliberate?”
I started to answer but Martha jumped in. “We think it’s a case of mistaken identity. That someone was after Jayne who lent her bike to Cordi.”
Darcy looked as though he smelled a bad smell. “You can’t be serious. Who would want to hurt Jayne?”
“Our question precisely,” crowed Martha.
“While we’re on this farfetched line of reasoning, maybe it was Cordi and someone was trying to scare her off looking for Stacey’s killer,” said Darcy.
Martha shrugged and I tried to look composed in the line of danger.
“On the off chance that such a spectacular theory is correct, I think you should stop snooping around,” Darcy added.
“Cordi doesn’t flinch at the first sign of danger.” Martha pulled herself up to her full five feet of menace.
I glared at her but said nothing, which said everything.
Darcy was still standing by my side and I swivelled to look at him. “What do you know about the vaccine?” I asked.
Electrocution wouldn’t have elicited as much of a response as my words did, but he recovered nicely. “What do you mean?
“I know it’s sugar,” I said and watched as the emotions on his face went from astonishment to fear to resignation.
“Sam,” he said.
I nodded. I waited for him to regain his composure and then said, “How did Stacey know to test it?”
“I told her.” He was going to make me work for every little bit of information.
“And what did you tell her?”
“I told her the vaccine was fake.”
I was starting to get exasperated. “And why did you know that?”
Darcy unfolded his arms and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “I overheard Wyatt on the phone.”
“And what did he say?”
“He was gloating about how the vaccine was fake and how much fun it was going to be when the first foal was born.”
“He actually said that?”
Darcy nodded. “Yeah. He did.”
“And what happened when you told Stacey?”
“I thought she’d go ballistic but she just smiled and asked me to steal a vial and get Sam to analyze it.”
“Did she say what she was going to do with the information?”
“No.” He said the word too strongly and emphatically. I looked at him but his face was blank and unreadable, and I thought maybe I was reading too much into it.
After Darcy left I picked up the third folder — Jayne’s — and began opening it, but Martha was fidgeting so much beside me that I finally said, “What’s the matter?”
She took a deep breath, glanced around to be sure we were alone, and then said, “I was really bored so I went exploring around the cabins while you were busy almost getting incinerated. I was within ten feet of the cabin that Rosemary and Melanie share when I heard a man’s voice, low and angry. I was so startled at hearing a male voice that I kind of hung back in the palmetto. Prickly stuff that palmetto.”
“Martha, you eavesdropped!”
“Well, what else was I supposed to do? Announce myself to them and get the hairy eyeball, or sneak away empty-handed?
“So what did you get?”
“The man was standing with his back to me, but I could tell by the white hair that it was Wyatt. He practically hissed at the other person in the cabin and said, ‘How did you find out?’
“‘Please Wyatt,’ she answered. ‘I won’t tell. I know you had your reasons.’ Her voice was pleading, tearful and scared and I knew it was Rosemary.”
“And how do you know that? You some kind of clairvoyant?”
“She started to cry and it was quiet for a long time when I heard Wyatt whisper, ‘It’s okay, Rosemary, just as long as you don’t tell. Because that would be a bad thing and you know how much I hate bad things.’ His voice was unnerving.”
Martha looked at me. “It was like menace wrapped in velvet. That’s the only way to describe it.” She paused and then continued. “Wyatt left the cabin then and I could hear Rosema
ry crying and it was all I could do not to go in and comfort her.”
“I wonder if it’s about the vaccine,” I said.
“The fake one?”
“Yeah. Sam told me that the diagram on the paper I showed was from a vial of vaccine that Stacey gave him to analyze.”
Martha let out a long low whistle. “But why wasn’t Wyatt vaccinating the horses? Why was he giving them a placebo instead?”
“Maybe his services went to the highest bidder.”
“You mean the islanders who were against the vaccination?”
I nodded.
“Does that mean Stacey stole the vaccine?” asked Martha.
“Seems weird to steal the vaccine and then announce it had been stolen. What was she trying to prove?”
“Maybe she had no choice. Wyatt complained. She had to act.”
“What about which side of the debate she was on? Do we know that? If she was for the vaccination maybe Wyatt killed her to shut her up.”
“I think Sam told me she was a devout Catholic, which, if logic prevails, would put her on the side opposing vaccination. After all, it is, by any other name, birth control.”
“That would put her on Wyatt’s side.”
“Yeah, it would, wouldn’t it?”
chapter fifteen
Martha was pushing a little pea around her plate when Sam walked in. He was soaking wet and I instinctively swivelled to look out the window, but of course I couldn’t tell if it was raining because the windows were still boarded up.
He must have seen me because he grimaced and said, “Flooding down by the docks. I thought I could power through it but then my ride started coughing water halfway through and died right in the middle of the puddle.”
He whisked a wet lock of hair out of his eyes and answered my question before I asked it. “I tried to pull it out but the footing was slippery. Had to hike over to the compound and get Trevor.”
Trevor seemed to have his fingers in an awful lot of pies.
“Have you seen Melanie?” he asked as he glanced around the room.
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