A Fatal Vineyard Season (21 page)

But if wishes were dollars, we'd all be rich.

The place was about as ready as it was going to get, and I was resting my aching bones and muscles and having a pre-supper snack of Sam Adams accompanied by smoked bluefish pâté on crackers when the phone rang. It was Mattie Skye.

“I have a hacker here, J.W. Is that the right word? Anyway, would you like to talk to her?”

Hackers, or whatever the word was, came in both genders, apparently. “Put her on.”

“Her name's Darlene. Here she is.”

“Hi,” said Darlene. “I may have something for you.”

“Great.”

“Ivy Holiday was easiest because she's the best known of the three people you're interested in, and she has a fan club on the Net. I think I have more material than you might want, in fact.”

“What interests me most is whether she or the others have had any personal problems or problems with the law: arrests, fights, accusations, anything like that. And I'd like to know the other people involved, if any.”

“Yes, Mattie said that sort of thing interested you. Well, in Ivy Holiday's case, there's quite a trail, because she's got a temper. Did you see her at the Academy Awards?”

“No, but I read about it.”

“Well, that's classic Ivy. Here's some of what I got: She was born and raised in Texas. She and her father didn't get along, and she got married when she was sixteen to a drummer
in a band. That's where she got the name Holiday. She was Ivy Washington before that. The marriage lasted about a year and ended in flames. It was a pretty rough one, I guess. Anyway, she went one way, he went the other. I don't know who beat up the other one the most before they split, and I don't know what happened to him. He just dropped out of sight.

“She moved to California to be an actress and married a guy named Montgomery, but kept the name Holiday. He was another actor wanna-be. Only a few months later, he was killed in an accident. A combination of booze and drugs, apparently. He fell down the stairs in their apartment building and broke his neck.”

“Ivy has hard luck with husbands.”

“Some people do. They'd both been living pretty fast and loose in L.A. with a crowd of people a lot like them. Anyway, a few months after he died, Ivy was nailed, along with some others, for using coke at a party. Nothing much came of it.

“About that time her career improved even though she lost a couple of roles because she'd gotten pretty militant about racial stereotypes and the way women were treated in the industry. The scene at the Academy Awards was part of that. She's marched in parades and protested against sexism and racism, and got arrested once for a scuffle at a sit-in. She doesn't back down from anybody if she thinks she's right or thinks somebody's trying to take advantage of her, or of blacks or of women, or especially of black women.

“The most serious thing she's been involved with was a stalker named Mackenzie Reed. Do you know about him?”

“I do. And I know about Jane Freed and Dick Hawkins, too. Unless you know something about any of that business that I don't know.”

She told me what she knew, and it was even less than I knew.

“That's about it for Ivy, then,” said Darlene. “Shall I keep looking? Do you need more?”

I wanted to know everything, of course, but I said, “That'll do for now. Thanks. What about the others?”

“Thinner pickings, although I do have some stuff about both of them. There's more about Julia Crandel, so I'll start with her.

“She went to Brown, which seems to be a family tradition, and then went to New York to be an actress. She dated in Providence, but didn't have a real romance until she got to New York. She lived for several months with a guy named Sam Pierson, who was working on Wall Street. They broke up and she lived alone for a while, then shared an apartment with girlfriends. She got busted with some friends for smoking pot—can you believe that people still get busted for that?—then had another boyfriend for a while, a guy named Flynt. About that time she began to get roles on and off Broadway. After a year or so, they broke up, and she decided to try her luck in Hollywood.”

“That marijuana bust was the only problem she had? Were the breakups with the boyfriends rough?”

“Some hurt feelings, maybe, but only that. They met, they lived together, they went their separate ways. Very civilized.”

“Modern romance.”

“You got it. Anyway, she went out to Hollywood and has been there ever since, trying to get her foot in the door, and keeping her head screwed on pretty well while she's doing it. The only time she and the law ever met was at a New Year's party that got out of hand. She and some others spent the night in jail, and it cost them a little money to get back out on the street. My impression is that she was pretty embarrassed about the whole thing.”

“What about her relations with Jane Freed, the psychiatrist who was killed?”

“Yeah. I noticed that Julia and Ivy had the same therapist. A lot of people have psychiatrists, though.”

“But Freed was killed.”

“Not by Julia Crandel or Ivy Holiday, apparently.”

Apparently.

“Tell me about Buddy Crandel,” I said.

“Not too much on Buddy, I'm afraid. Most of what I got, I got from a friend out in L.A. who has friends who know people like Ivy and Julia and Buddy. Anyway, Buddy's originally from Hartford and did the Crandel-family thing by going to Brown, then moved to California to get into the movie business. I guess he decided pretty fast that he wasn't movie-actor material, so he worked at other jobs before he got on with the agency he's working for now. He doesn't have any criminal record as far as I could find out, but he does have the reputation of using women in what people used to call a pretty cavalier manner, even by Hollywood standards. I guess he's a good-looking guy, and women fall for him pretty easily. He charms them, then he dumps them. My information is that he's left some pretty angry women in his wake, but there's no law against that, so his record is officially clean. Sounds like a real scumbag, to me.”

It was the first sign of female resentment that Darlene had revealed. A lot of women are pretty mad about guys like Buddy Crandel, I guessed. And who could blame them?

“You might like him if you met him,” I said, just to be perverse. “He's a good-looking, sweet-talking guy.”

“Save me from such people!”

“Stay up there in Weststock and you'll be safe. Thanks a lot for your help.”

“What's going on, anyway? Mattie says you used to be a policeman. Why do you want to know about all this stuff?”

“I'm just nosy. Thanks again. Can I call for you again, if I need more information?”

“Only if you tell me what it's for.”

“Deal.”

I rang off and was surprised to note that the sun had set. It had been a long day. My arm and leg hurt. I ate supper,
took some aspirin, hoped that the cops were keeping a sharp eye on Alexandro, locked the doors just in case they weren't, and went to bed.

In the morning, I woke to that odd yellow-sky calm that sometimes precedes a hurricane. There was no wind; there was a strange, almost eerie look to things, and an ethereal quality to the light and the feeling of the air. I wondered, as I had before, if perhaps it had something to do with high, invisible clouds or winds that changed the effect of the sun's rays. Whatever the cause, the famous calm before the storm was not just the stuff of folklore; it was really happening once again.

I listened to the news. Elmer was coming straight at New England and picking up speed. I swallowed a couple more aspirins with my orange juice, then had coffee with a full-bloat breakfast: bacon, fried eggs, English muffins slathered with butter and this year's homemade bluebarb jam. It was full of cholesterol and calories, but delish and just what I'd need to start me on a day of hurricane preparations at John Skye's farm and some other places I took care of during the winter.

I washed the dishes, stacked them in the rack, and was headed out of the house when the phone rang. It was Lisa Goldman with some news I didn't like.

“Our guy dozed off in the wee hours and Alexandro's loose. You'd think a guy that big would be easy to find, but we haven't found him yet. He's probably in his own Caddie, but we don't know for sure because he might have bullied somebody into loaning him a car. Keep your eyes open. I think he's mad at you.”

Terrific. And I'd been sleeping hard while Alexandro was out there on the prowl. I was glad I'd locked the doors, even though the locks wouldn't have done much to slow Alexandro down if he'd decided to come in. Or, for that matter, any more than they'd stop anybody else who really wanted to get in, since my house was not a fortress and locks are only deterrents to honest people.

I don't like locks, and I refuse to be one of those people who on principle lock everything, always. But this time, when I left the house, I locked it behind me even though I knew full well the gesture was as meaningless as a rose in bloom or wind in dry grass.

Alexandro the arsonist didn't even need to break in; he only needed a can of gasoline to turn my house to ashes.

I drove first to John Skye's farm and made sure everything was buttoned down: shutters fastened, doors secure, blowable stuff stashed in the barn. I was conscious of limping, and my bad arm hurt, but I kept at my work until it was done. Then I went on to the next house and worked there for another hour. It's remarkable how much stuff has to be tended to when a big blow is coming: flowerpots, lawn furniture, screens and screen doors, boats, cars, and anything that might be picked up and thrown through a window or into the middle of next week.

I went from house to house all morning, working at such chores, then, satisfied that I had done what I could do, I drove down to Edgartown through the preternatural yellow air, passing houses where people were doing the same things that I had been doing.

On Main Street, merchants were taking in anything they still displayed on the sidewalks and were taping windows or nailing plywood over them.

At Collins Beach, men were hauling boats and trailering them away, working fast but steadily with a minimum of wasted energy. The harbor was already emptier than it had been when I'd hauled my own boats and would be emptier still by tomorrow, when Elmer was scheduled to arrive, if he didn't go out to sea first.

Out on the glassy water, I could see Roger Goldman putting triple lines on the
Kayla.
Farther out, the
Invictus
hung on her mooring, her bowline limp and sagging. If she were my boat, I'd be putting more lines on her or maybe moving her someplace where she was less likely to be struck
by another boat broken free from her mooring and blowing downwind across the harbor. Many a securely tied boat has been wrecked in that way.

But
Invictus
wasn't my boat, and nobody seemed to need my help, so I circled back and parked in the lot at the foot of Main.

Mike Smith's truck was parked in front of the yacht club, which meant that he was busy squaring things away inside or up at the club's tennis courts. The club's boats were already out of the water, I noted. Mike, being a careful, well-organized guy, had probably started hauling them as soon as Elmer seemed to be considering coming to New England. There was a good chance that tomorrow the water would be over the floor of the club and, in fact, over the lot where I was now parked, so Mike had his work cut out for him.

I went into the Dock Street Coffee Shop. The regulars were lined up along the counter, and the talk was about Elmer, the effect he would have on the upcoming Derby, and an occasional aside about the Red Sox, who, it being September, were far out of the race, now that Clemens was gone. You have to be hardy or stupid or eternally optimistic or all three to be a Red Sox fan, but I am one of them.

“What happened to you, J.W.?” asked the waitress, putting a cup of coffee in front of me.

“I'm just wearing this sling so I'll get the sympathy I think I deserve for living the wretched bachelor's life while Zee's over on the mainland visiting her folks.”

“Poor baby. But you'd better tell her to stay there till this storm goes by. It looks like we may get it on the nose. After lunch, we're closing up and packing things above the high-water mark until things quiet down. What'll you have?”

I had a burger and hash browns and more coffee.

Around me, voices spoke of hurricanes past, compared experiences, and speculated about Elmer with that
combination of fascination and fear that characterizes talk of natural disasters. When I went outside again, the air seemed yellower and the mirrored water more ominous.

I had a sense of doom, a primeval feeling that forces beyond my ken were taking control of my world. I didn't like it.

Where was Alexandro? Hiding out until dark, until he could wreak havoc upon some enemy? Me, for instance? Or was he even on the island? Maybe Alberto had sent him to America, and he was hunkering down someplace over there until the cops all had to return to their regular shifts, and it was time for him to come home again and go back to work as a terrorist.

Or maybe he'd decided to just drop dead out of sheer orneriness.

Sure.

I was tired and sore. I drove to my driveway entrance and turned in. I stopped the Land Cruiser and looked down the sandy drive. Had another car come in since I'd left? Was its driver waiting for me down at the house, or in the trees?

I remembered the pistol under the seat and took it out and put it beside me. Then I drove down to the house.

No one was there.

I walked around to the shed and the corral, pistol in hand.

Nothing. No sign that anyone had been there.

I unlocked the front door and went through the house.

Nobody.

I was clearly becoming as paranoid as those people who lock their houses all the time. Not good, kemo sabe.