A Case of Vineyard Poison (3 page)

It would be good to see Quinn, and I looked forward to having him down a couple weeks before the wedding. He would loosen things up in case they got tight. Quinn didn't let things get tight. He disapproved of tight, except for occasionally being that way by dint of booze.

I wondered who his friend was. Since his divorce, Quinn had taken up with a number of women, but had never remarried. Once or twice, he had brought women down to the island with him, and I had put them up in my spare bedroom, which is normally only occupied by my father's hand-carved decoys. There were twin beds in there, so this time Quinn and his friend would also
have that room. Someday, maybe, it would be a child's room. But not yet.

A half hour after Quinn had called, the phone rang again. I was making some pesto bread to go with the salad, and having a Sam Adams. This time it was Hazel Fine.

“I called the hospital, but Zeolinda was busy with someone who had just come into the emergency room.”

“She'll be here for supper, if you want to talk with her personally.”

“Oh no. You can pass the word, such as it is. Tell her that I checked her account from April till now, and there's no sign of any hundred thousand dollars or any other error. I think we can blame it on a couple of faulty ATM machines. A computer glitch of some kind.”

“A hundred-thousand-dollar glitch is a pretty good glitch.”

“Yes it is. As I told you, we're installing a new computer system here at the bank. Until now, we've had a servicer over on the mainland doing all of our computer work, but that got too expensive, so we've decided to do all of our processing in-house. We've had problems transferring the accounts from there to here, and this balance error is apparently just another one of them. It probably happened late last week, and didn't get corrected until this morning.”

“I thought you bankers didn't make mistakes.”

“You thought that, eh? Say, I have a deal in real estate—a bridge in New York—that might interest you.”

We laughed. I'm so bad at handling my own money that I'm probably qualified to open a savings and loan of my own.

When Zee came in, tired after a long day of putting
people back together after sundry mishaps, I sent her right to the shower. After she came out, feeling better, I gave her a martini and took her up to the balcony. There, I plied her with hors d'oeuvres and more martinis while I gave her Hazel's message and told her of Quinn.

She liked Quinn. “It'll be good to see him again. Who's his friend?”

“I didn't catch his name.”

The-news of the coming of Quinn and his companion was the second thing that happened that week. The third thing happened on Wednesday. It was a very bad thing.

Martha's Vineyard draws young people like honey draws bees. They swarm down from the mainland every spring and take up jobs that pay peanuts for the sake of spending a summer in the island sun. They promise to work faithfully until Labor Day, but quit in mid-August, as their employers know they will, so they can have a couple of weeks of uninterrupted fun before returning to college. If they break even over the summer, they are happy. They are usually happy anyway, since it's hard to be unhappy when you're twenty years old and sun, sex, surf, and beer are in such plentiful supply.

Only young people from abroad, the Irish and the like, keep working into the fall, since the money they make on the island, however meager, is more than they can make at home.

These summer citizens live in shacks in the woods, or group illegally in large houses in violation of town ordinances which are ignored by their slumlords. The slumlords can make a pretty penny from their summer guests, and care little at all about the condition of their buildings or their occupants, or about the opinions of their neighbors.

Just after I pulled out of my driveway late Wednesday afternoon and headed for Edgartown, I met one of the youthful summer persons coming along the other side of the road on a wobbly moped. Bound home after a day's work, I guessed. She had long brown hair and would have been quite pretty if the expression on her face had not been so strained. Was she thinking bad thoughts about her boss or boyfriend, or just trying to stay on top of her restless moped? I thought she should try to look less severe, so her frown lines wouldn't become habitual, and recalled my father warning me that if I kept sucking my thumb I'd grow up looking like Eleanor Roosevelt.

I had spent the afternoon refiberglassing the bottom of my dinghy. I had worn a hole in its bottom by dragging it over the sand when I launched or retrieved it from Collins Beach, where I kept it log-chained to the bulkhead during the summer. It was now in the back of the Land Cruiser, and I was returning it to the log chain which prevented Edgartown's gentlemen summer sailors from stealing it so they could get back out to their yachts late at night after the launch service had ended. I drove down Cooke Street, fetched the Reading Room dock, and made the dinghy fast. Inside the Reading Room, the men were having cocktails. Only men had cocktails at the Reading Room, I'd been told, except for a couple of hours on Sunday nights, when wives and ladies-in-waiting were allowed to share the booze.

I had not been invited to the cocktail hour, so I parked the Land Cruiser on the beach, and walked down South Water Street, past the giant Pagoda Tree and various inns and hotels, to Main Street. There I took a right and popped in at the Wharf pub, where at that time I could get a glass of Commonwealth Brewery Ale, America's finest beer. The pub was full of young people and noise, but the beer made the stop worthwhile, so I had not one but two before returning to the street.

There I met the chief of the Edgartown police, looking
fairly composed for a man whose Vineyard summer had already started. The chief was watching one of his summer rent-a-cops trying to handle the mix of cars and pedestrians at the four corners, where Water Street and Main Street intersect. The rent-a-cop was not doing too badly, and the chief saw no need to interfere, even though the walkers were, as usual, crossing the street without looking or slowing down. Happily for the rent-a-cop, the drivers were both slow and alert, so no bumps or bruises had yet occurred, and the rent-a-cop was able to keep both vehicles and people on the move.

The chief and I walked away from the intersection and down to the parking lot in front of the yacht club. Out in the harbor, a few yachts were swinging at their moorings. There would be a lot more later. On a stake between the yacht club and the Reading Room my cat-boat, the
Shirley J.,
pointed her nose into the falling southwest wind.

“Did you see that crowd?” said the chief. “It looks like the Fourth of July and here it is only June. More cars and people every year!”

“That's what you said last year.”

“I think this may be my last year. I can't take this anymore. I think I'll retire and rent a place up in Nova Scotia for the summer. They say that up there it's like it used to be here twenty years ago.”

“That's what you said last year.”

“I'll come back down here after Labor Day. It's not so bad then.”

“That's what you said last year.”

“I know I said it last year, but this time I really mean it. The other day when I came out of the station, this woman stops her car and asks me, ‘Is this the right road?'
That's all. Just, ‘Is this the right road?' Not ‘Is this the right road to Katama?' or ‘Is this the right road to the airport?' Just, ‘Is this the right road?' Ye gods, what kind of a question is that? Then, about an hour later I was up in front of the A & P and damned if a guy doesn't stop his car and ask me the very same thing. That's when I knew it was time to go up to Nova Scotia.”

“What did you tell those people?”

“I did the right thing. I smiled and said yes, it was. And they drove off.”

“Clever. And some people think you're simple-minded.”

“Speaking of simple minds, are you still planning to marry Zee now that she's just a poor working girl without a hundred thousand in her account?”

“How'd you find out about that?”

“I ran into your betrothed and she told me about her rapid rise to riches and her equally rapid return to normalcy. Too bad. You two could have afforded a humdinger of a honeymoon. Where you going, by the way?”

“I thought we might go to your house. Annie could cook for us and you could open the champagne and run errands. What do you think?”

“It's all right with me if you move in. I expect to be in Nova Scotia.”

“In that case, I'll have to change my plans. We'll need somebody to serve us breakfast in bed, and shine our shoes, and stuff like that.”

“Actually, this island is a good place to have a honeymoon. A lot of people spend an awful lot of money to do it. Annie and I did it ourselves. Of course that was because we were too poor to leave.”

“It's not too bad being so poor that you have to live on
Martha's Vineyard. I can imagine being poor in a lot of worse places.”

“You don't know what poor is. You've got government money pouring in every month.”

Not pouring, really, but at least dribbling. A bit from the Boston ED. for carrying the bullet next to my spine, and some benefits from the USA as compensation for some Vietnamese shrapnel, bits of which still oozed out of my legs now and then. Any hopes I might have had of making a career as a male model had been done in, thanks to the scars bestowed upon me by people trying to kill me. I had collected some more scars since coming down to the Vineyard for good, but I didn't get any money for those.

“Your favorite reporter is arriving this weekend,” I said. “Quinn. He's bringing a friend.”

“Quinn!” The chief spat out the name. Some time before, Quinn had covered a drug bust on the island and had produced a story that was unflattering to the DEA and the various police agencies which had let the big guys get away while rounding up the small fry.

“I'm taking him and his friend fishing. You want to come along?”

“I don't have time to fish. I have to work for a living. Besides, Quinn and I don't hit it off too well.”

“You barely know each other. It would be a good change for you to pursue the wily bluefish instead of the local perps.”

“Quinn's a perp as far as I'm concerned.”

“You're getting an awfully thin skin in your declining years.”

The chief climbed into the cruiser that was parked across from the coffee shop.

“It's not a thin skin. It's a Quinn skin,” he said. “I've got a thin skin for Quinn. Nobody else.”

“Quinn just doesn't trust people in authority. That's why he's a good reporter.”

“Hell, I don't trust them/myself. But then, I don't trust reporters either.”

“In that case, it sure makes me proud to know that you trust me.”

“Stand back from the window,” said the chief. “I think I'm going to be sick.”

I stood back and the chief backed out of his parking place, arched a brow, and drove away.

I walked over to the dock and watched the local fishing boats come in to unload their customers. From the looks of their catches, they were nailing the blues offshore. I went fishing offshore in the
Shirley J.
sometimes, but when I did it was a long day, since catboats are not famous for their speed. As far as I knew, I was the only offshore fisherman who still used a sailboat. I didn't think the idea would catch on among the commercial guys.

I walked back up past the Navigator Room, the restaurant with Edgartown's best harbor view and some of its best food, hooked a left on South Water Street, and went back to Collins Beach.

The cocktails were still flowing at the Reading Room, but I still hadn't gotten my invitation to join in, so I climbed into the old Land Cruiser and headed home.

The narrow streets of Edgartown were already mid-season busy. The white houses, and the gray-shingled houses, and the green lawns and bright flowers were elegant as always. The June People were on the sidewalks, happy to be in so lovely a place on such a fine, soft, summer evening.

The A & P traffic jam was in full bloom, but I was in a good mood and survived it with barely a curse. I popped out on its far side and was pleased to see a long line, which I was not in, backed up in the opposite direction. It's nice to not be in someone else's line.

I stopped at the head of my long, sandy driveway and got my mail, then drove on down toward my house. About two thirds of the way down, I saw the moped lying in front of me. I stopped and got out. Beyond the moped, there were footprints in the sand of the driveway. I followed them. They wandered down toward my house. After a hundred yards, the footprints veered off into the trees. I found the girl there. She had long brown hair, and I recognized her as being the moped rider I'd seen earlier on the highway. She smelled of vomit and diarrhea, and there were flecks of foam at her mouth. I could find no pulse at her neck or wrist. Her eyes were wide and staring. I left her there and jogged down to the house and called 911.

Finding the girl was the very bad thing that happened.

I was back at the Land Cruiser when the first wailing patrol car arrived from Edgartown. Behind it was an ambulance with its flashing lights.

Tony D'Agostine got out of the cruiser. “Can you move your truck?”

“The girl's about a hundred yards farther on,” I said. “I may be wrong, but I don't think there's any rush. I thought you'd want a look at this moped and the girl's tracks before I changed anything.”

“Okay,” said Tony. He looked over his shoulder at the medics getting out of the ambulance. “Bring your gear,” he called. “The victim's down ahead.”

“You might want to tell them to go down the side of the driveway so they don't mess up the girl's tracks any more than I already have.”