There was no sign of Vauclain anywhere at the cove, so I went up through a tangle of artichoke plants toward the center of the island. The area there was rocky but mostly flat, dotted with undergrowth and patches of sandy earth. I stopped beside a gnarled cypress and scanned from left to right. Nothing but emptiness. Then I walked out toward the headland, hunched over against the pull of the wind. But I didn’t find him there either.
A sudden thought came to me as I started back and the hairs prickled on my neck. What if he’d gone into the caves and been trapped there when the tide began to flood? If that was what had happened, it was too late for me to do anything — but I started to run anyway, my eyes on the ground so I wouldn’t trip over a bush or a rock.
I was almost back to the cove, coming at a different angle than before, when I saw him.
It was so unexpected that I pulled up short and almost lost my footing on loose rock. The pit of my stomach went hollow. He was lying on his back in a bed of artichokes, one arm flung out and the other wrapped across his chest. There was blood under his arm, and blood spread across the front of his windbreaker. One long look was all I needed to tell me he’d been shot and that he was dead.
Shock and an eerie sense of unreality kept me standing there another few seconds. My thoughts were jumbled; you don’t think too clearly when you stumble on a dead man, a murdered man. And it was murder, I knew that well enough. There was no gun anywhere near the body, and no way it could have been an accident.
Then I turned, shivering, and ran down to the cove and took the Sportliner away from there at full throttle to call for the county sheriff.
Vauclain’s death was the biggest event that had happened in Camaroon Bay in forty years, and Sunday night and Monday nobody talked about anything else. As soon as word got around that I was the one who’d discovered the body, the doorbell and the telephone didn’t stop ringing — friends and neighbors, newspaper people, investigators. The only place I had any peace was on the Jennie Too Monday morning, and not much there because Davey and Handy wouldn’t let the subject alone while we fished.
By late that afternoon the authorities had questioned just about everyone in the area. It didn’t appear they’d found out anything though. Vauclain had been alone when he’d left for the island early Sunday; Abner had been down at the slips then and swore to the fact. A couple of tourists had rented boats from Ed Hawkins during the day, since the weather was pretty good, and a lot of locals were out in the harbor on pleasure craft. But whoever it was who had gone to Smuggler’s Island after Vauclain, he hadn’t been noticed.
As to a motive for the shooting, there were all sorts of wild speculations. Vauclain had wronged somebody in Los Angeles and that person had followed him here to take revenge. He’d treated a local citizen badly enough to trigger a murderous rage. He’d got in bad with organized crime and a contract had been put out on him. And the most farfetched theory of alclass="underline" He’d actually uncovered some sort of treasure on Smuggler’s Island and somebody’d learned about it and killed him for it. But the simple truth was, nobody had any idea why Vauclain was murdered. If the sheriff’s department had found any clues on the island or anywhere else, they weren’t talking — but they weren’t making any arrests either.
There was a lot of excitement, all right. Only underneath it all people were nervous and a little scared. A killer seemed to be loose in Camaroon Bay, and if he’d murdered once, who was to say he wouldn’t do it again? A mystery is all well and good when it’s happening someplace else, but when it’s right on your doorstep you can’t help but feel threatened and apprehensive.
I’d had about all the pestering I could stand by four o’clock, so I got into the car and drove up the coast to Shelter Cove. That gave me an hour’s worth of freedom. But no sooner did I get back to Camaroon Bay, with the intention of going home and locking myself in my basement workshop, than a sheriff’s cruiser pulled up behind me at a stop sign and its horn started honking. I sighed and pulled over to the curb.
It was Harry Swenson, one of the deputies who’d questioned me the day before, after I’d reported finding Vauclain’s body. We knew each other well enough to be on a first-name basis. He said, “Verne, the sheriff asked me to talk to you again, see if there’s anything you might have overlooked yesterday. You mind?”
“No, I don’t mind,” I said tiredly.
We went into the Inn and took a table at the back of the dining room. A couple of people stared at us, and I could see Lloyd Simms hovering around out by the front desk. I wondered how long it would be before I’d stop being the center of attention every time I went someplace in the village.
Over coffee, I repeated everything that had happened Sunday afternoon. Harry checked what I said with the notes he’d taken; then he shook his head and closed the notebook.
“Didn’t really expect you to remember anything else,” he said, “but we had to make sure. Truth is, Verne, we’re up against it on this thing. Damnedest case I ever saw.”
“Guess that means you haven’t found out anything positive.”
“Not much. If we could figure a motive, we might be able to get a handle on it from that. But we just can’t find one.”
I decided to give voice to one of my own theories. “What about robbery, Harry?” I asked. “Seems I heard Vauclain was carrying a lot of cash with him and throwing it around pretty freely.”
“We thought of that first thing,” he said. “No good, though. His wallet was on the body, and there was three hundred dollars in it and a couple of blank checks.”
I frowned down at my coffee. “I don’t like to say this, but you don’t suppose it could be one of these thrill killings we’re always reading about?”
“Man, I hope not. That’s the worst kind of homicide there is.”
We were silent for a minute or so. Then I said, “You find anything at all on the island? Any clues?”
He hesitated. “Well,” he said finally, “I probably shouldn’t discuss it — but then, you’re not the sort to break a confidence. We did find one thing near the body. Might not mean anything, but it’s not the kind of item you’d expect to come across out there.”
“What is it?”
“A cake of white beeswax,” he said.
“Beeswax?”
“Right. Small cake of it. Suggest anything to you?”
“No,” I said. “No, nothing.”
“Not to us either. Aside from that, we haven’t got a thing. Like I said, we’re up against it. Unless we get a break in the next couple of days, I’m afraid the whole business will end up in the unsolved file. That’s unofficial, now.”
“Sure,” I said.
Harry finished his coffee. “I’d better get moving,” he said. “Thanks for your time, Verne.”
I nodded, and he stood up and walked out across the dining room. As soon as he was gone, Lloyd came over and wanted to know what we’d been talking about. But I’d begun to feel oddly nervous all of a sudden, and there was something tickling at the edge of my mind. I cut him off short, saying, “Let me be, will you, Lloyd? Just let me be for a minute.”
When he drifted off, looking hurt, I sat there and rotated my cup on the table. Beeswax, I thought. I’d told Harry that it didn’t suggest anything to me, and yet it did, vaguely. Beeswax. White beeswax...
It came to me then — and along with it a couple of other things, little things, like missing figures in an arithmetic problem. I went cold all over, as if somebody had opened a window and let the wind inside the room. I told myself I was wrong, that it couldn’t be. But I wasn’t wrong. It made me sick inside, but I wasn’t wrong.