“Trust me,” said George, slipping the ticket into his shirt pocket and grinning. “I believe I will enjoy myself.”

  The costume barn was at the far end of Ruth’s property, hidden by cedar and locust trees, high-bush blueberry, and wild grapevines that had overgrown the meadow. Carrying the clean bed linens, George loped down the dirt road that led to the barn, shoved the wide barn door to one side, and stopped in surprise.

  His bed was off to one side, where the movers had probably left it, but it was roughly made up with sheets and a pillow. A lamp had been placed on a box next to the bed, where the movers would have no reason to set it, and a half-dozen new comic books were stacked next to the lamp. His bedroom bookcase had been shoved to one side of the bed, and its shelves were stocked with cans of baked beans, Vienna sausage, bags of chips, cookies, candy bars, a box of crackers, and bottles of soda.

  The racks of costumes and stage furniture had been pushed to the back of the barn to make space for the impromptu bedroom.

  Was someone staying here? The bed didn’t look as though it had been slept in. His mother had said nothing about another visitor. George dropped the clean linens and his backpack on the bed and hurried back to the house in time to see the taillights of his mother’s car disappear around a bend in the road.

  Sergeant John Smalley, with Alison by his side, followed Casey into Victoria’s drive.

  “We just saw you at Peg’s house, Sergeant,” Victoria said.

  “John picked me up in Vineyard Haven,” said Alison. “I was shopping.”

  Teddy’s mother had driven her own car from her house, and parked next to the police Bronco. Smalley carried her suitcases from the Bronco into the house, while Amanda waited uncertainly.

  “Let me show you around,” Victoria told her. “I won’t take you up to the attic. The stairs are steep and I wouldn’t want you to fall.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Trumbull. I didn’t look forward to being alone in my own house. And with Peg gone …”

  When they returned to the kitchen, Smalley, Alison, and Casey were still talking cop talk.

  “Have you had your supper yet, Sergeant?” asked Victoria.

  “I’ll pick up something on my way home, Mrs. Trumbull.”

  “There’s enough soup for all of us.”

  “You sure? I don’t want to …”

  Victoria lifted the lid of the large, steaming soup kettle.

  Smalley looked in and breathed deeply. “Lentils. I accept.”

  “My granddaughter made the soup. I usually add frankfurters just before serving.” She looked in the small freezer above the refrigerator and shuffled things around. “I thought I had an opened package, but I seem to be mistaken.” She found a new one, and Smalley opened the tough plastic with his pocketknife.

  “Thanks for putting up the girls and Dr. McAlistair,” he said. “Mrs. Vanderhoop, too. Looks like we’ve set you up in the hotel business.”

  “I can use the extra money,” said Victoria.

  Amanda got up quickly from the kitchen table. “Let me pay you now, Mrs. Trumbull, before I forget.”

  “A check is fine. Or cash.” Victoria quoted a rate that seemed unreasonably high to her.

  “Are you sure?” Amanda asked. “That seems awfully low.”

  Casey looked at her watch. “I’ve got to get home to Patrick, Victoria. See you all tomorrow?”

  “Take care, chief.” Smalley folded his knife and put it back in his pocket. “I was telling the chief I’m not comfortable with Roddie, the man who picked up the girls at the coffeehouse, Mrs. Trumbull.”

  “He’s really only a boy. He is a bit different, but then he’s a poet.”

  “I want to keep an eye on the girls until I know what he’s up to.”

  “He’s Dearborn Hill’s nephew, his brother’s son, and as I told you, he works for the Express office at the airport.”

  “He spends a lot of time at Island Java.”

  Victoria dropped the last slices of hot dog into the soup and set the lid back on the kettle. “I often read my poetry there. Poetry finally is regaining popularity after years of self-indulgent navel gazing.” She took a breath. “It’s about time people recognize how powerful poetry …”

  Smalley quickly cut in. “This is different.”

  “Poets should be among the highest paid …” she searched for the right word, and Smalley interrupted again.

  “He attaches himself to girls sitting together, talks about his art and himself, and lets them pick up the tab.”

  “He wouldn’t be the first impoverished artist. Did the girls complain?”

  “No.” Smalley shook his head. “Where are they now?”

  “They’ve been fixing up their room most of the afternoon.”

  On cue, the girls came down the back stairs into the kitchen.

  “We heard voices,” said Tracy. “Okay if we come down?”

  “Of course,” said Victoria. “This is Sergeant Smalley. You spoke to him earlier today on the phone.”

  “Hear you had quite a fright last night,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” said Tracy.

  Amanda returned with her rent money and gave it to Victoria, who put the bills in her pocket, then introduced her to the girls. “Mrs. Vanderhoop will be staying with us for a day or so until we find her son.”

  “Ma’am.” Karen stood uncertainly by the stairs.

  “Mrs. Trumbull will find your son,” Tracy reassured her. Amanda smiled faintly.

  “Would you girls like to have supper with us?”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Trumbull. But, like, we don’t want to …”

  Victoria waved the weak protest aside. “Set the table for seven. The dishes are in there.” She pointed to the cupboard.

  “Seven?” said Amanda.

  “You, Sergeant Smalley, Tracy and Karen, and me. Alison, the forensic scientist, is staying with us, and you know Howland Atherton from the play, of course. Frankenstein’s monster?”

  Tracy stopped gathering utensils. “Mr. Atherton? The monster? The DEA agent? He’s coming?”

  “You’ll get to see what he really looks like,” said Victoria.

  Karen glanced around. “Is he here now?”

  “He’ll be back shortly. He went home to feed his dogs.”

  The evening was cool and the aroma of the hearty soup, cooked all afternoon, filled the house.

  By the time Howland showed up, Smalley was ladling soup into bowls as Alison set them on the table. Howland looked quizzically from one to the other. “Had you two met each other before today?”

  “I knew Alison by reputation.” Smalley passed her another filled soup bowl.

  Alison smiled.

  “Meet your hitchhikers, Howland.” Victoria introduced the girls, then ushered everyone into the dining room and seated herself at the head of the table.

  The girls looked at each other nervously.

  Howland turned his attention to them. “I wasn’t thinking when I pulled over for you two. Sorry about that.”

  “Please everyone sit,” said Victoria.

  There was a general shuffling.

  Alison said to Amanda, who was sitting next to her, “I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I know what you’re feeling.”

  Amanda looked down at her untouched soup and nodded.

  CHAPTER 13

  During supper, Amanda picked up her spoon, stirred her soup listlessly, and set the spoon back on her plate.

  Victoria turned to Smalley, who was on her right. “Howland tells me you’re a Frankenstein scholar.”

  “I wrote my senior thesis on Frankenstein,” he said. “I understand your play follows Mary Shelley’s book closely.”

  “Her book has been terribly misinterpreted.” Victoria’s eyes were bright. “I hope my adaptation will help people understand that Frankenstein is about social issues of the time, not the horrific aspects of the monster.”

  Tracy and Karen looked at each other and giggled.

  “You see?” said Howland, reaching for the bread. “The monster has far more allure than man playing God.”

  “Same issues as today,” said Smalley. “Mary Shelley was concerned about technology. Today, we replace knees and hips with hi-tech materials, transplant kidneys, and pluck living hearts out of dead people. We keep the dead alive with technology.”

  “Brain transplants, next,” said Alison. “Pass the bread.”

  “You’re not implying technology is evil, are you, Smalley?” Howland handed the breadbasket to Alison. “Frankenstein’s problem was that he was underfunded and unsupervised. For a first-year college student, a teenager working on his own, he did pretty well, scrounging body parts from cemeteries and morgues and stitching them together secretly by candlelight.”

  “Imagine the poor ventilation,” said Alison. “He had to work in a hurry, once he acquired a corpse.”

  “Yuck!” said Karen.

  “The monster had to be huge, so Frankenstein could work on the fine stitching,” said Howland.

  Victoria coughed politely.

  Howland continued, “At least Frankenstein didn’t have to worry about malpractice suits.”

  Alison broke off a corner of her bread. “The cost of malpractice insurance is why I’m in forensic medicine.”

  “The malpractice lawyers would have had a field day,” said Howland. “The poor monster wasn’t to blame. He was an innocent.”

  Amanda had been stirring her soup without eating. She spoke up for the first time. “The monster may have been innocent to begin with.” She set her spoon on the side of her plate. “But three or four murders is hardly the work of an innocent.”

  “The second murder,” said Victoria, “was the work of a flawed justice system. The monster killed little William, Justine didn’t. She was innocent, yet she was convicted and hanged. Murdered by the so-called justice system.”

  “You see?” said Smalley. “Nothing’s changed.”

  “May I have the butter?” Karen asked in a small voice.

  “Bread, too?” asked Howland.

  “Yes, please. Thanks.”

  Smalley folded his napkin and set it next to his empty soup bowl. “Two hundred years ago Mary Shelley saw technology as a threat to personal freedom. Nothing’s changed there, either,” he said. “Will we implant chips in people so medical records can be accessed, personal freedom be damned?” He turned to Victoria. “I want very much to see your play, Mrs. Trumbull. It’s time to clear away the sensationalism that’s overlain the book.”

  “Bravo!” Howland applauded. “Do any of you intend to go to opening night?” There were emphatic denials around the table. “What about you two?”

  “We don’t have tickets.” Karen shook her head and her hair swirled about her face.

  “Do you want to go? I have comp tickets I won’t use.”

  “Really?” said Tracy.

  Howland reached into his shirt pocket and handed two tickets to Tracy.

  “Thanks, Mr. Atherton!” said Tracy. “Do we have time to get to the theater?”

  Victoria checked her watch. “The bus goes past the house in a little over ten minutes. That will get you there in time.”

  After the girls left, the remaining diners sat around the table for a long time, finishing their coffee and conversing.

  At eight, Victoria looked at her watch. “Curtain time.”

  “It must be difficult to be the playwright and miss opening night of your play,” said Alison.

  “Under the circumstances …” Victoria stopped in midsentence. “I have trouble understanding such insensitivity.”

  Howland laughed. “Dearborn? Insensitive?”

  Tracy and Karen arrived at the playhouse in plenty of time and stood in a rapidly growing line.

  “It’s almost like a Broadway opening,” said Tracy. “Look at the crowd.”

  Karen stood on tiptoe. “The line goes all the way down to Main Street.”

  “We’re lucky to have tickets.”

  The doors opened, and the line slowly moved into the theater, which had been a barn when Ruth Byron’s Aunt Fifi willed it to her. An usher took their tickets, and they moved up the steep steps with the crowd into what had been the hayloft.

  Tracy and Karen found seats next to a cute guy who was sitting alone, about a third of the way up the tier of seats.

  “Hi,” said Tracy. “Are these seats taken?”

  The guy smiled. “They are now.”

  Once Tracy and Karen had settled themselves, Tracy turned to him. “Do you live on the Island?”

  “My mother does. I’m visiting her. How about you two?”

  “We’re working for the summer. The Harborlights Motel?”

  “Nice place. Right on the harbor. Where are you staying?”

  “West Tisbury?”

  He grinned. “That’s where my mother lives. How did you get here to the theater?”

  “By bus. And you?”

  “Hitchhiked.” He held out a hand to Tracy, then Karen. “I’m George Byron, by the way.”

  The girls introduced themselves. “We tried, like, hitchhiking last night,” said Karen with a giggle. “You’ll never guess what happened.” She and Tracy told him about Frankenstein’s monster picking them up, and how the monster was really a DEA agent, and they just had supper with him, and how they’re living with the playwright.

  “Victoria Trumbull is the playwright,” said George. “She and my mother are good friends. My mother, Ruth Byron, owns the theater.”

  “Wow!” said Tracy and Karen together.

  “This conversation is typical Island,” said George. “Everyone’s connected.”

  The lights dimmed and Dearborn Hill stepped onto the stage.

  “That’s my uncle,” whispered George.

  “Wow!” said Tracy and Karen together, again.

  The audience fell silent.

  Dearborn held his hands in a sort of benediction and looked up to some unseen divine being. “Tonight’s performance,” he said in mellow tones, “is dedicated to Peg Storm, who died last night.”

  A gentle murmur from the audience.

  “Peg was new to the stage. But Peg was a professional in every sense of the word. She would have wished the play to go on. We honor her wish with tonight’s performance. Frankenstein Unbound. First, a moment of silence.” He bowed his head.

  Somewhere in town, a clock tolled eight.

  Dearborn lowered his hands and looked over the audience. “Peg’s part, Justine Moritz, will be read tonight by Nora Epstein, our stage manager. The monster will be played by Roderick Hill …”

  “My cousin,” George whispered.

  Dearborn continued, “ … Robert Scott, who plays the Arctic explorer, in addition will read the part of Frankenstein’s friend Henry Clerval. And the bride of Frankenstein will be read by Rebecca Hill.”

  “My aunt,” whispered George.

  Dearborn started the applause, and the audience joined in. “Ladies and gentlemen, let the play begin!”

  Scene One was set in the cabin of a ship held fast in the ice while on a voyage to discover the fabled Northwest Passage. The crew had rescued Victor Frankenstein from a cake of ice that he’d been rowing, desperately in pursuit of a gigantic figure the crew had seen racing across the ice with a dog sled. The explorer, delighted with his new friend, listened to Frankenstein’s strange story.

  Toward the end of the first scene, someone in the back of the auditorium snickered.

  Before the second scene of Act One had played for more than a few minutes, someone else in the audience guffawed, and then laughter broke loose and rippled through the auditorium.

  The setting was Frankenstein’s college dorm room, where he was stitching together miscellaneous body parts, accompanied by stage thunder and lightning. Dearborn, as Frankenstein, had donned a black wig to make himself look eighteen. The wig perched on his white hair like a crow nesting in cotton wool.

  After the second scene, the actors could do no wrong. The audience laughed, howled, stamped their feet, applauded, whistled, booed. There were shouts of “Bravo!”

  Early in the second act, the monster begged Frankenstein to create a mate for him. Weak from laughter, the audience could only groan with pleasure.

  “I am thy creature!” cried Roderick, the monster. “I ought to be thy Adam …”

  Tracy turned to George and whispered, “Who did you say the monster is?”

  “My cousin Roderick,” whispered George in reply.

  The man in front of them turned and shushed them.

  When, in the third act, Frankenstein tore to pieces the Eve he was creating for his Adam, and tried to dispose of the leftover body parts, the audience went berserk.

  The actors picked up the energy from the audience, and audience and actors rose to higher and higher pitches, each feeding off the other.

  Frustrated at the destruction of his mate-to-be, the monster hunted down Frankenstein’s friend, Henry Clerval, and strangled him. Roderick, as the monster, was so caught up in the enthusiasm, he was perhaps a bit too realistic. Robert Scott, who played Clerval, collapsed, as he was supposed to, and was carried off stage, as the script called for, and the audience forgot him as the play moved on to further delights—Frankenstein’s honeymoon with his bride of not quite one day.

  Becca was at her emoting best in the honeymoon hotel. Stage thunder and lightning presaged the coming of the monster. The bridegroom heard her scream, dashed into the honeymoon suite, saw his bride lying limp on the bed and the monster scrambling out of the window.

  “Bravo! Bravo!” Whistles. Rhythmic and prolonged applause.

  In the wings, Dearborn, sweating profusely under his black wig, directed the substitute players to their places.

  “Explorer! Where’s the explorer?” Dearborn called out, and when no one responded, he shouted again: “Nora! Act Three, Scene Five. Read Scott’s part at my deathbed. On stage, everyone! Quickly, quickly!”

  “Frankenstein! Explorer! Monster! Places!” Nora called out. She picked up a copy of the script and took her own place at Dearborn’s side, where he had flung himself onto his bed.

  Although the stage was fairly dark for the scene change, the audience could still see enough to feel a part of the show, and called out instructions to the stagehands and actors.