Indian Pipes Read Online Free

both so quiet, Victoria could hear the town clock ring in the church steeple. She looked at her watch. “Ten o’clock. I have to be somewhere at eleven.”
    Hiram sighed. “Victoria, I’m worried. The killer must have known Burkhardt expected me to go with him.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    Hiram lifted his empty mug, then put it down. “After you left last night, I listened to my answering machine. Burkhardt had left a message saying he’d been delayed and would meet me an hour later. Same place.” Hiram toyed with his mug. “The killer may have overheard Burkhardt. Or perhaps Burkhardt told him I’d be there?”
    “If Jube was so suspicious of the person he was meeting that he asked you to accompany him, why would he then go alone with him when you didn’t show up?”
    “I don’t know what went through Burkhardt’s mind, Victoria. My first thought when he asked me to go with him was that it involved the blackmail letter. But that didn’t make sense. Why not simply meet at my house?” Hiram paused.
    Outside the window, a blue jay tried to land on a small perch of the bird feeder and flew off with a flutter of wings and a squawk. The feeder swung back and forth, dropping seeds into the browning iris leaves.
    “And who, on the Island, anyway, would care about Tad’s and my relationship? Then I thought the meeting might have to do with one of Burkhardt’s nieces. He’d been having some problems with one or both of them, you know.”
    “Or they with him,” said Victoria.
    “I imagined other scenarios. Burkhardt meeting with a motorcyclist. Talking to someone about casino plans, taxes, septic permits, the tribe. But nothing made sense. Why would anyone need to meet him on the beach?” Hiram ran both hands through his crew cut. “I believe now that the killer planned to lure Burkhardt to a secluded place to kill him.”
    “Did Jube suspect the meeting was a trap?”
    “Burkhardt was uneasy about the meeting, but I doubt if it occurred to him that anyone would have the temerity to attack him.”
    “Where is your friend Tad now? Did he know that Jube was blackmailing you on his account?”
    “Tad knew,” said Hiram, gazing out the window. “Tad has been visiting me for the past two weeks.”
    “Is it possible that Tad was meeting with Jube?”
    “Tad?” Hiram stared at her. “Good heavens, no.”
    “Where is Tad now?” Victoria asked.
    “On his way back to Omaha.”
    “Is he driving?”
    “Tad’s not a killer, Victoria.”
    Victoria checked her hands again, tried to wedge dirt out fromunder her thumbnail with a fingernail. “Under the right circumstances we can all be killers.”
    Hiram looked at her in surprise.
    “If someone threatened my family? Yes.”
    Hiram stared at her.
    She continued. “Suppose Tad contacted Jube, offered to buy the letter, asked to meet him somewhere private.”
    “No, Victoria. No.”
    Victoria looked up. “Jube, of course, contacted you to join them. When Tad realized you’d agreed, he put the meeting off an hour. That fits with the facts we have.”
    “I spoke with Tad after he left yesterday morning. He was on the ferry, just about to dock in Woods Hole.”
    “He called on a cell phone, didn’t he?”
    Hiram groaned and tilted his chair backward.
    “Don’t lean back in the chair,” said Victoria.
    Hiram set the chair down.
    Victoria said, “Do you have any idea what happened to the letter Jube wrote?”
    “Once I signed the faked test results, he put the letter back in an inside pocket in his windbreaker. Last night when I reached Burkhardt on the cliff, he was still wearing the same jacket. I searched his pockets.”
    “Did you find the letter?”
    Hiram shook his head. “No.”
    Victoria scowled. “If Tad will discuss his situation honestly with his wife, that letter will be toothless.”
    “That won’t happen, Victoria. You don’t understand.”
    Victoria’s face flushed. “Yes, I do. Perhaps the killer took the