Read Online Indian Pipes by Cynthia Riggs - Free Book Online Page B

Unless, of course, this was a spur-of-the-moment killing.”
    “It wasn’t.” Victoria put the stones back in her cloth bag. “Jube planned to meet someone on the beach.”
    “In that case, if it were me,” the chief spread his chunky hand on his chest, “I would probably carry something with me, a tire iron comes to mind, or a handheld sledgehammer, something small with considerable weight.”
    “Wouldn’t it be obvious to Jube that the person was carrying something suspicious?” Victoria asked.
    “Not necessarily. The loose clothing we affect today conceals everything. Excess weight, for example.” He patted his own gut, cloaked in a brilliantly flowered Hawaiian shirt. “Dojan, can you take a small boat off the beach?”
    “On a calm day.”
    “The wind has shifted,” Victoria said, looking out the window at the tall cedars that were no longer swaying.
    “Will you be able to see bottom?” asked the chief.
    Dojan shrugged. “It is shallow as far as a man could throw a hammer, not even a fathom. The water is clear.”
    “Who has a dinghy we can use?” Victoria turned from Dojan to the chief.
    Dojan stood. “Obed has an inflatable.”
    The chief lifted the phone and dialed. When he finished speaking, he set the phone down again and turned to Dojan. “Cell phones are a modern miracle. Obed is out on his boat now. He will bring his dinghy ashore and meet you near his grandmother’s house.”
    Dojan grunted.
    “And you, Victoria Trumbull, are you willing to stay onshore to keep Dojan in a straight line?”
    Victoria nodded.
    Twenty minutes later Dojan parked his van at the edge of TrudyVanDyke’s property, and they waited for Obed, who rowed ashore in his dinghy from his anchored fishing boat.
    “I got nothing better to do,” Obed said. “The fish aren’t biting. Almost a slick calm out there now.”
    The waves now lapped on the shore, gentle swishes that hissed softly. A sandpiper scurried along the edge of the swash, dipping its long beak into the sand.
    After Dojan showed Victoria where to stand, Obed shoved the rubber inflatable off the beach and took the oars. Victoria leaned on her stick and watched for signals. Dojan peered down into the water. Obed rowed out, fifty feet, Victoria guessed. Then they turned toward her. Each time they came in close to the beach, Dojan signaled Victoria, who moved three paces down the line. Her back ached from standing and shuffling along. When she reached a large rock, she was glad to sit. The water was so calm she could hear every word Do- jan said to Obed. “Go left.” “Stop.” “Keep going.”
    The afternoon wore on. Three times Dojan dived to retrieve some object he’d seen. He was still wearing his mesh shirt and black jeans. Each time, the object turned out to be a false lead. The sun settled to Victoria’s left. She realized she hadn’t had lunch, and reached into her cloth bag for the candy bar she’d bought at Alley’s when she’d cashed a ten-dollar check this morning.
    “Stop,” Dojan ordered for the fourth time.
    Victoria looked up.
    “My friend,” he called out to her. “We have found something this time.”
    Victoria crumpled up the candy wrapper and put it in her bag, then drew out her notebook and pen.
    Dojan again catapulted himself out of the dinghy with a splash. He stood, chest-high in the water, and wiped his hand across his face. Then he bent over in a surface dive, head and shoulders underwater, feet in the air, and resurfaced seconds later brandishing a tool. The tool had a foot-long handle that ended in a thick curved iron rod with a flat spadelike head.
    Victoria shaded her eyes against the glare coming off the water. “That’s a weeding hook,” she called out. “Looks like a new one. I have a weeder just like that.”“Want to keep looking?” Obed said to Dojan.
    Dojan shook his head, spraying water from his wet hair like a black dog. He hefted the heavy tool from one hand to the other as he waded toward shore,