I felt her turn toward me. “You got shot?”
“It happened a long time ago. A thief got trapped in an alley and shot me trying to get out.”
“My God! Did he get away?”
“It was a woman, although I didn’t know it at the time. I killed her.” I looked toward Evangeline and found her wide eyes boring into mine. “When I got out of the hospital I quit being a cop and came down here to be a fisherman. Now I’m doing cop work again. Security detail. Life loves a jest.”
“I had no idea.”
Footsteps came toward us and we turned toward them. A man wearing loose, casual summer clothing approached us with a smile. He looked to be about my age and he walked like a cat.
Evangeline was on her feet. Her face was pale and she seemed to be trembling. She didn’t look like the tough, self-made international star I’d heard about. She looked like a lost girl.
His voice was soft and deep, and I had a flashing thought of Mesmer. “Evangeline. You’ve returned. Our house is blessed by your presence. I was delighted when I learned you’d be performing at the Celebration. It was good of you to come so far for such a good cause. Alas, I’ll miss your performance Saturday night because I have to return to California that morning.” His smile was melancholy but not without humor. “Duty keeps one humble, and that is no doubt a fine thing.”
He took her hands in his and beamed at her, then turned to me.
“I’m Alain Duval. Simon Peter tells me that you brought Evangeline to me. You have my thanks.”
He released Evangeline and put out his hand. I shook it and gave him my name. His was a gentle hand, but there was sinew in it. I looked into his pale blue eyes and could feel myself being drawn into them, as though I were falling into the sky.
I pulled myself back to earth, but in that instant understood his power as a proselytizer. Beside me, Evangeline took a deep breath and seemed to gather scattered strength of her own.
“Come inside,” said Duval, spreading his hands in an encompassing gesture. “We’ll have tea and conversation. You and I have much to talk about, Evangeline.”
But she shook her head. “No. I don’t want tea. I came back for just one reason, Alain. To apologize.”
His smile was beatific and his eyes were bright. “You owe me no apology, my dear.”
“But I do. When I left you I hadn’t the courage to say good-bye. I owe you an apology for that. Now you have it. Good-bye, Alain. Come on, J.W.”
But his eyes seemed to hold her where she was, and that hypnotic voice said, “You were always free to stay or go, but we really should talk. Come, my dear. We’ll have some tea. I’m sure you have something more to tell me.”
“No!” But her feet didn’t move, and her eyes were staring into his.
Why so great a no?
I took her arm and turned her away. “We’ll go, then,” I said. “Very nice meeting you, Mr. Duval. Maybe we can have that tea another time.”
His eyes glowed with some inner flame. But then he stepped back and smiled the smile of a saint. “Anytime, Mr. Jackson. You’ll both be more than welcome.”
Holding Evangeline’s arm firmly in mine, I walked her back to our car and put her in the passenger seat. I repossessed my tools and pistol and drove away from the ashram. Alain Duval was still on the porch, and on the lawn the four Simon Peters stood watching.
“I’ll take you home,” I said. “I think you’ve had enough excitement for one day.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
About halfway back to Edgartown she reached into herself and found that strength that women can muster when many a man would still be weak.
“Alain is a man who doesn’t give up easily,” she said. “He doesn’t like it when women leave him. He wants them back so he can leave them.”
I thought there was more between her and Duval than that, but I only said, “You’re already gone. If you hadn’t left before, you did it today.”
“With your help. If you hadn’t been there…”
“I just made it easier for you to go. If you’d wanted to stay, you would have.”
“I suppose.” She was silent for a while, then said, “Your wife is a lucky woman, I think.”
“I’m the lucky one. I’ll introduce you sometime. Incidentally, our daughters are the same age, if Jane ever wants a playmate.”
“That’s a very kind offer. Thank you.”
“Give it some thought. Ask Jane.”
“I will.”
We drove past the guard at the head of her driveway and went down to the Carberg house, where I parked the white Ford.
She thanked me, then smiled and gave a small wave as she walked into the house. I watched her go inside, thinking about what I’d heard and seen. I was turning the Explorer toward the driveway when the door of the house burst open and she came running toward me, her face awash with fear.
I stopped, got out, and went to meet her.
“Janie’s not here and neither is Hale! They should be in the house! Something’s wrong! We have to find them!”
Chapter Eight
Brady
I climbed into J.W.’s old Land Cruiser, drove to Edgartown, and found Officer Kit Goulart talking on the phone at the reception desk inside the police station. When I walked in, she smiled and held up a finger. I smiled back.
I’d met Kit a couple of times when I’d been on the Vineyard fishing and hanging around with J.W. She was a giant of a woman, several inches taller than me and built like a linebacker, but she had an incongruously soft, little-girl voice. I wondered how the person on the other end of the line was picturing her.
When she hung up, she stood and held out her hand to me. I took it. It was the size of a first baseman’s mitt.
“Mr. Coyne,” she said. “Nice to see you again. Zee Jackson told me you’d be stopping by. What can I do for you?”
I gave her a condensed version of the story, then took one of Christa’s pictures from my briefcase. “It would be too much to expect, I know, but I wonder if you recognize her?”
She frowned at the picture, then shook her head. “I’m pretty good at faces,” she said. “I can tell you that she hasn’t been arrested or anything. At least not here in Edgartown. Otherwise…” She blew out a breath. “I can’t guarantee I haven’t seen her. The island has never been this mobbed. Crowds everywhere. I see thousands of faces every day I’m out on the streets.”
“I wonder if you could keep an eye out for her,” I said, “and call me if you see her. I’m staying with Zee and J.W.”
“Can I keep this?” She touched the picture.
“Of course.”
“I’ll make copies and give them to the other officers,” she said. “We’ve got a bunch of auxiliaries and part-timers on for the summer. We’re trying to be a presence, what with all the people and all the excitement over the Celebration.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Thing is, though, I wouldn’t want anybody to confront her. Christa doesn’t want to be found. Our best chance is if I can speak with her myself, if we can just locate her.”
Kit smiled. She had a surprisingly pretty smile. “I’ll make that clear to everybody.” She looked away for a moment. “I could fax this picture to the other departments on the island, if you like. Tell them if anybody sees this girl, they should call you at the Jacksons’ house. How would that be?”
“That would be a wonderful help,” I said.
“Have you checked the hospital?” she said.
“That’s where I’m going. Can you suggest anyplace else?”
She looked up at the ceiling, and at that moment the phone rang. She answered, spoke briefly, then hung up. “There are kids all over the place,” she said to me. “Most of them don’t have any money. They’re all here to gawk at famous rappers and crash the Celebration. If we arrested all of them, we’d have to build a prison the size of the Fleet Center.”
“Arrest them for what?”
Kit Goulart smiled. “Peeing in parking
lots. Throwing up on the sidewalks. Camping in the state forest. Building bonfires on the beaches. Running each other down with motor scooters. You name it.”
“You’re letting them do those things?”
“You get caught peeing on somebody’s BMW, you get what we call a stern warning.” She shrugged. “You can only do so much.”
“So the kids are camping out in the state forest?”
She nodded. “We’ve been, um, advised to look the other way. The Chamber of Commerce likes it. They’re happy to get the kids out of the way. Out of sight, out of mind, you know?” She waved her hand in the air. “They’re good kids, most of them. They just like to party, and they say this Celebration is gonna be the biggest party of the new millennium. The local police forces take turns putting a couple of auxiliaries in the forest at night, just to keep an eye on things. The kids drink, they smoke stuff, they play guitars, they have sex. So far, nobody’s stabbed anybody.”
I was nodding. “Christa could be there. In the forest.”
“Mr. Coyne,” said Kit, “Christa could be anywhere.”
It took me nearly half an hour to drive the few miles from the Edgartown police station to the hospital in Oak Bluffs. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper on this Sunday afternoon, and the streets and sidewalks were thronged with bicycles and scooters and joggers and people walking their dogs. I couldn’t imagine why anybody would be here voluntarily, but here they all were, having what I guess was their own version of a good time.
Ilsa Johannsen turned out to be the woman who took insurance information and admitted emergency room patients at the island hospital, which she was doing when I got there. When she finally had a minute to talk to me, she told me they’d already set a season’s record for motor scooter accidents and drug overdoses and sunburns, and there was still almost a week to go before the Celebration. They were bracing themselves for that.
“We’re just not equipped,” said Ilsa. She was a small, sixtyish woman with permed grayish hair and big round glasses and quick, nervous hands that kept fiddling with her computer mouse. “Every Boston surgeon and Manhattan psychiatrist with a summer home here will be on call next weekend. It’s gonna be Woodstock all over again.” She picked up a pencil and poked her hair with it. “Anyway, Zee said you were looking for a girl?”
I gave her Christa’s picture.
She squinted at it. “Nope. Don’t recall seeing her. Course, I’m not here twenty-four hours a day. It only seems that way. What’d you say her name was?”
“Christa Doyle.”
Ilsa Johannsen tapped at some keys on her computer, squinted at her monitor, then looked up at me and shook her head. “She hasn’t been in.” She glanced past me. “Sorry, Mr. Coyne. I got people waiting.”
“Would you mind keeping that picture?”
“Sure. If I see her, I’ll call you. You’re staying with the Jacksons, right?”
“Right,” I said. “Thank you.”
When I turned to leave, I saw that there were five or six people behind me. There was a man in a bathing suit holding a baby in his arms, a teenage girl holding a bloody towel against the side of her head, and a woman pushing a very old man in a wheelchair, and as I walked out through the sliding doors, a man helping an extremely pregnant woman squeezed by.
Back in J.W.’s Land Cruiser, I poured a mug of coffee from the thermos Zee had given me and looked at my watch. It was a little after four o’clock. I felt pretty good. I hadn’t found Christa, but I’d touched base with the local police and the only hospital on the island, which was the first thing any competent private investigator would have done. With luck, somebody might spot her in the next day or two.
Well, I couldn’t depend on luck. I knew how it worked. Good investigators—mediocre ones, for that matter—just kept at it, turning over rocks, kicking at bushes, flailing around stubbornly and persistently until something happened. I could do that. I was as stubborn and persistent as the next guy.
I had no idea where Christa might be staying. The most populous towns on the island were Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven, where the ferries docked, and Edgartown. But she could be anywhere.
Since I was already there, I headed for the waterfront at Oak Bluffs. I knew there were lots of shops and restaurants and bars there. Oak Bluffs was one of the two towns on the Vineyard that sold booze, which made it a focal point of island nightlife. The other wet town was Edgartown.
I figured I’d find a bartender to talk to. Bartenders saw everything, knew everyone. While I was at it, I’d have a beer.
The commercial section of Oak Bluffs by the harbor was worse than Copley Square at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and I drove around for about half an hour before I finally spotted a shiny Audi pulling out of a parking space down near the ferry landing. It left a slot big enough for J.W.’s Land Cruiser, and I grabbed it.
I wandered up and down the narrow streets, studying every face I saw in the sidewalk crowds and peering into the shops and restaurants, and I was about to step into a dimly lit bar when something on the sign over a shop doorway across the street caught my eye.
Painted on the sign was an expurgated Kokopelli—that is, minus the erect penis—and the words “Four Winds Trading Post.” I smiled and crossed the street.
The window display featured silver and turquoise jewelry and bright woven blankets. There were corn-husk dolls and beaded moccasins and buckskin vests, painted pots and clay pipes and hanging dream catchers, miniature badgers and mountain lions and moles carved from stone. Propped on a stand inside the window was a hand-painted sign that read, FORTUNES BY PRINCESS ISHEWA.
Hmm. Why not? I went in.
There were six or eight tourist types in Bermuda shorts peering into the display cases, and behind the counter with her arms folded across her chest stood a tall woman with long gray-streaked blonde hair. She wore jeans and a pale blue T-shirt. She seemed to be scowling at her customers, as if she hoped they wouldn’t try to buy any of her wares.
I went up to her and said, “Are you Princess Ishewa?”
“Not hardly. She’s out back.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at a doorway hung with a beaded curtain. “Do you need your fortune told?”
“I need help,” I said, with what was intended to be my most disarming smile. “That’s for sure.” I pulled out a picture of Christa. “I’m looking for this girl.”
She glanced at it, then shrugged. “I don’t know her.”
“I thought she might’ve come into your shop. She wears a Kokopelli.” I pointed at Christa’s necklace.
“Lots of people wear Kokopelli. Most of them have no idea who he is.” She glanced at the picture. “Is this your girlfriend or something?”
I laughed quickly. “She’s eighteen.”
The woman shrugged.
“It’s my friend’s daughter,” I said. “She’s gone missing. We think she’s here, somewhere on the Vineyard.”
“And you?”
“Me? I’m the family lawyer. Would you mind keeping the picture, and if you should see her, call me?” I wrote my name and J.W.’s phone number on the back of the photo.
“I don’t see why not.” She took the photo, glanced at it again, slipped it under the counter, then looked up at me. “So did you want the princess to tell your fortune?”
I smiled. “Is she really a princess?”
“In fact she is.”
“And she has a psychic gift?”
The woman smiled. “Oh, indeed. She’s got the second sight. She’s quite uncanny.”
“Well,” I said, “why not. I can use all the help I can get.”
“She’s with somebody right now. She should be done soon.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll wait.”
I stepped outside the shop and watched the faces in the crowd. I was tempted to just walk away. Me, a hard-headed attorney, a confirmed agnostic, visiting a damn fortune-teller. It was ridiculous. As far as I was concerned, all psychics—card readers, astrologers, crystal-b
all gazers, mediums, channelers—were fakes and rip-off artists. Some of them, of course, were pretty clever at it. They knew how to size up a sucker, make a few educated guesses, and then tell him what they figured he—or more often she—wanted to hear.
I’d run into a lot of women—and a few men, too—who sincerely believed that the alignment of the moon and stars and planets at the moment of your birth determined the course of your life. It seemed to give them comfort, and I sometimes envied them. Anything that gave you comfort was a good thing, as far as I was concerned. The trick was believing in it.
Several years ago I got into a conversation about racial profiling with an attractive female lawyer while we were waiting for a taxi outside a courtroom. We decided to continue our discussion over a drink, and we were on our second old-fashioned when she reached across the table, picked up my hand, and began tracing her forefinger across my palm. She told me I had a long life line that featured many intriguing side streets and detours. Then she rubbed the base of my thumb, looked up at me, and proclaimed me a “passionate person,” and two hours later she proceeded to prove her clairvoyance to both of our satisfactions.
Well, I didn’t care about my fortune. If I had a fortune, I certainly didn’t want to know it. But I did care about Christa’s fortune. Maybe this Princess Ishewa had seen her, and if she wanted to pretend to conjure up Christa’s image in tea leaves or talk to her spirit as it floated around on the ceiling, it was okay with me. I’d take a little truth any way I could get it.
A few minutes later the blonde woman from the shop beckoned me inside. “The princess is waiting for you,” she said. “Go ahead in.”
I pushed my way through the beaded curtain and found myself in a square, windowless room about the size of my bedroom back home. There was burning incense in the air, and some kind of music featuring flutes and bells was playing softly. The room was lit by dozens of candles lined up on shelves on the walls, and I had to blink a couple of times before I saw the woman standing in the corner next to a small round table. She was looking at me without expression from large, dark eyes.
Second Sight Page 8
