Missing Witness (20 page)

The trio walked up the path that stretched from the dock to the top of the island. Will was walking with Fiona, urging her not to exert herself.

At the top, Jonathan pointed off to the south end of the island, where they could see a grove of trees and a gate of some sort.

“That's the family cemetery of the original owners of the island. They were given the charter by the English crown.”

“Who was that?” Will asked.

“Youngblood. Ebenezer Youngblood was his name.”

Will suggested they check it out.

They made their way to the rusted iron gate. There was an iron picket fence, equally corroded, that surrounded the small plot of ground. In the middle of the small cemetery there was a dark oak tree of immense size, with long, gnarled limbs that stretched out in all directions. The thick branches extended over and out of the graveyard.

There were five gravestones. One was tilted sideways, actually partly subsumed within the trunk of the tree.

“Someone must have planted the tree too close,” Will remarked. “When the tree grew, it just sucked that grave marker right into it.”

“Look,” Fiona said, pointing to a smaller gravestone “It looks like an outline of a little lamb on this one.”

“That's probably the Youngblood's infant son. He is buried here,” Joppa noted.

“How old was he?” Fiona asked.

“Just a few months old, as I recall.”

“Who are the others?” Will asked.

“One is Ebenezer,” Joppa explained. “One is his wife—she sold the island to Malachi Joppa after Ebenezer died. But she got Malachi to promise that even though he owned the island from that point on, she could be buried with her husband and son when she died.”

“And the other two?” Fiona asked.

“Those are Ebenezer's mother and father. They died before him.”

“Can we tell who is buried where?” Will asked, squatting to try to read the indecipherable marks on the gravestones, which had been rubbed smooth over three hundred years.

“Except for the child's, not really. At least, I haven't been able to read them.”

The group left the cemetery and tried to close the gate, but it was rusted open.

As they walked, Will wondered at his client's extensive knowledge of the island—and of its history. But he chose not to pursue it—at least not then.

“Let's go over to the remains of the Youngblood house,” Joppa suggested.

Fiona spotted a roughhewn bench at the edge of the clearing, with a nice view of the ocean.

“I don't want to be a spoilsport,” she said with a smile, “but I'm winded. I think I'll go sit down on that bench. You two go ahead.”

Will and Jonathan picked up the pace, walking quickly across the clearing, and down a path until, in the midst of a group of overgrown trees and bushes, they saw the remains of an old house.

Two stone chimneys still stood upright. The stones of the foundation showed a rough outline of the perimeter of the house.

“This is the home built by Ebenezer Youngblood,” Joppa said.

In front of the house—one to the left and one to the right—were two stone pots, each about two feet high, with onion-dome tops.

Will noted the name
YOUNGBLOOD
in block letters faintly appearing on both of them.

After walking amid the ruins of the house for a few moments, Joppa suggested they visit one more site—the existing log cabin at the north end.

En route, they traversed a wide, open area of sandy soil and pine needles—about the size of a football field. Then they arrived at the “cabin.”

It had been built, Joppa explained, in the 1930s by Randolph Willowby's father. Will was surprised at its size. It was a large lodge built of whole logs fitted together, with a broad porch.

The two walked through it. The rooms were all vacant. The main room was a huge living room with an immense stone fireplace and a tall open-beam ceiling.

“This place reminds me a little of our home—Fiona's and mine—back in Virginia,” Will said with a smile.

“Randolph Willowby stayed here when he was a boy,” Joppa remarked. “After he died, they took all the furniture out.”

After walking through the lodge, the two men walked outside. Will noticed an outhouse in the back.

“No indoor plumbing?” he said with a laugh.

“Guess not.”

Will walked to the edge of the clearing that faced the open ocean. From there he could see the bright colors of several sailboats off in the distance. Even farther was the tiny outline of an ocean tanker slowly plowing the waters.

“Quite a view,” he remarked.

Joppa nodded but said nothing.

After a minute or so, Will broke the silence.

“I'm impressed with your historical knowledge of this place. Did you do your own research?”

Joppa studied Will before he spoke.

“Some.”

“You get any information from anyone else?”

Another pause.

“Yes. You might say that.”

Will knew he had to start digging.

“Look, Jonathan. Don't think I'm prying. But I would like to know how you know so much about this place. The history. The characters involved. It may help me to win your case.”

Joppa looked out toward the blue ocean.

Then Will thought back to something Fiona had told him about her interview with Frances Willowby.

“Jonathan,” he said directly, “there is something I need to know.”

Joppa eyed his lawyer closely.

“I need to find out…whether you ever discussed this island, personally, with Randolph Willowby. In that one contact you said you had with him.”

After glancing off into the distance for a moment, Joppa answered his lawyer.

“Yes, I did. When we had our meeting.”

“When?”

“Not long before he died.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

“On the island?”

“Yes.”

“Randolph Willowby met with you right here on Stony Island? Why didn't you tell me that before?”

“Everything I thought was important—the history of this place as Randolph explained it to me—I just shared with you today.”

“What else did the two of you discuss?”

“Other than the island—and the historical information?”

“Yes. What else did you talk about?”

Joppa was visibly uncomfortable. He put his hands in his pockets and studied the ocean. Finally he responded.

“Let's leave it this way…anything else we discussed doesn't really have anything to do with this case.”

Then he turned and quickly started walking to the midpoint of the island, where Fiona was waiting on the bench.

Will followed, but walking slower.

As he strolled, he was pondering this last, strange interchange with his client. And he was thinking about Stony Island—with its vast view of the Atlantic, and its three centuries of birth and of life. And, of course, of death.

29

“I
THOUGHT YOU SAID WE WERE EVEN UP
. I thought everything was paid and I was in the clear.”

Terrence Ludlow was standing behind the bar at Joppa's Folly. He was nervously drumming his fingers on the counter.

Blackjack Morgan was sitting on a barstool, tapping his cane on the floor.

“Yeah. Sure. And after this job, you will be all paid up.”

“That's what you said the last time.” Ludlow grimaced.

“Look, Ludlow,” Morgan said casually, “let's do the numbers. Let's add it all up. First, you got all the gambling debts you owe me from our little casino. I can't help it that you're a consistent loser…And then there's the expensive little white party dust I provide to you—at a discount I might add—on a regular basis. Now anytime you want to stop using—all you have to do is say, ‘I'm not using anymore.' But as it is, you keep asking, and I keep supplying. And you ran up a big tab.”

Ludlow was shifting nervously.

“You said all I had to do was sign that piece of paper giving you the island if we win the lawsuit—and that was it.”

“Sure. That was part of it.”

“Then you want me to handle some incoming shipments for you. So I'm the bag man.”

“Yeah, so? That was also part of it…”

“Now you want me to do something else. This stinks. I want to know this is the last of it. The end.”

“Absolutely. You can count on it.” Morgan smiled. “All you got to do is drop a small package of highly refined beautiful stuff at an address I'm going to give you. It's for a very special person.”

“Am I supposed to pick up some dough at the drop-off, or what?”

“No. No money. I'm giving this as a free sample.”

“So—who's the delivery to?”

Morgan asked Ludlow for a telephone directory. Ludlow bent under the bar and pulled it out.

Morgan flipped it open about halfway and turned it around, so that the residential telephone listings were facing the bartender. Then he took his index finger and pointed to a name and address.

Ludlow stared, then looked up at Morgan in disbelief.

“You got to be kidding,” he said with an anguished look on his face.

“Do I look like a stand-up comedian?” Morgan sneered.

“Oh, I can't do this…this is way too close for comfort. How am I supposed to do this? What if somebody sees me?”

“You make sure nobody does. You slip into the place when no one's looking. You put it down on the kitchen table or some other obvious place. And then you get out.”

Ludlow stared at the name and address in the phone book, swallowing hard and rubbing his forehead.

Morgan was studying him carefully. Looking beyond his furtive, twitching eyes. Beyond his pasty, yellow-gray complexion. Morgan spoke.

“I know what you're thinking. Maybe you'll drop a package off all right, but it'll be a package of sugar, not the real stuff. After all—how would I know? Or maybe you'll say that you did it—but you won't have because you're afraid that it could be tied back to you. That's the kind of stuff that's going through your mind. And you see, I know all that. And I know when it's all said and done, you're going to realize it isn't going to work. The only thing you can do is to follow my orders—exactly. Because if you don't, nothing else is going to matter. Because if you don't do exactly what I want you to do, someone's going to find you washed up on the beach.
There's Terrence Ludlow. Face-up on the beach. The birds picking at his eyes.
Now, that'd be a sad day for you, Ludlow, wouldn't it?”

The other man was going to respond, but they heard someone step into Joppa's Folly.

Orville Putrie was standing in the doorway, grinning. He had some papers in his hand.

Morgan stepped away from the bar and motioned to a table at the far end of the tavern. “C'mon over to my office.”

Stretching his bad leg straight out, he nodded to Putrie, who had quickly sat down across from him.

“Let's go. What do you have?”

“Okay. About the I-Y-U business…”

“Keep your voice down,” Morgan said in a hoarse whisper. “So what about it? You find something out?”

“First of all,” Putrie said with a flourish of self-congratulation, “you have to understand how much data I had to go through. You have no appreciation. For me to run multiple vectors of information. And to look for a convergence. I mean, I'm good. I'm really good.”

“So…lay it out for me. What do you got?”

“This is what I got.” Putrie placed a few photocopied pages in front of him.

They were from an old magazine dated 1935. The article concerned excavation of the ruins of the house of Ebenezer Youngblood. By that time nothing had been left except for the two chimneys, part of the foundation, and a few other interesting architectural features.

Morgan stared at the photograph that figured prominently in the article. It showed several men digging around the foundation. After a few more moments, he threw it on the table and looked at Putrie.

“Don't waste my time. What's the point here?”

Putrie was giggling and shaking his head.

“Blackjack, look again. Look at the picture.”

Morgan glanced again at the photograph, then at the words under it. Then he looked more closely at the photo. Now Morgan had a big grin on his face, and began humming, off-key, some unknown tune.

Grinning so broadly that he was revealing one of his gold teeth, he started laughing, took the photocopy, folded it carefully, and put it in his top pocket.