A Vineyard Killing (13 page)

“Brad Hillborough brought Al Kirkland to the firm,” said Paul. “They met when Al was trying out for the Olympic pentathlon team the year Donald won the gold and Brad was Donald's private trainer. I was still in grade school, but I heard about it later.”

“I understand that Kirkland didn't make the pentathlon team.”

Paul nodded.

“Al was okay as a fencer, but was uncomfortable on a horse and only average as a swimmer and runner, so he never made the team. But he impressed Brad with his hard work and later Brad talked Donald into hiring him. Al was grateful and became as loyal to Brad as Brad is to Donald.”

I remembered Kirkland's thin face and metallic manner when he'd come to our house with an offer and left with a threat. There hadn't seemed to be much warmth in him.

“Was he a good employee?” I asked.

Paul thought awhile, then said, “He was smart and dependable. He did what he was hired to do and earned his salary.”

“Did anyone in the company dislike him?”

“Enough to kill him, you mean?” Paul shook his head again. “Al wasn't easy to like, but as far as I know nobody hated him. They worked with him but they didn't socialize with him.”

“Did he socialize with Brad Hillborough?”

Paul pursed his lips. When he answered, his voice was strangely flat. “He and Brad may have gone out together now and then, but as far as I can tell Brad is really only interested in my brother's success. He doesn't have much of a social life outside of the business. His life consists of Donald and Saberfox. I believe he'd die for either one. Not much else interests him.”

“How did you get along with Kirkland?”

“It was always just business. I never saw him outside of the office.”

“I've heard you're in line to take over the company someday. Would you have kept him on?”

He wasn't sure. “If that happens and if he'd been as loyal to me as he was to Brad, I probably would have. I'm Donald's only family, so I'm the logical person to take over the firm if Donald retires; but if the time comes when I do take over the company, even Donald knows that our MO is going to change. I don't like this business of challenging the titles of property belonging to ordinary people. I'd stop that. Maybe Al wouldn't have wanted to work for me.”

“How about Brad Hillborough? Would you keep him on?”

This time Paul knew the answer. “Brad wouldn't ever work for me. He doesn't approve of me taking over Saberfox, so if that happens he'll leave and go where Donald goes if Donald will let him.”

“Why is he opposed to you taking over the company?”

He shrugged. “He was there at the beginning and he doesn't think I have the fire to keep it going. Donald runs the company the same way he fenced, with total attention. He's almost a monomaniac. Maybe that's what it takes to be a champion or to run a business. Brad thinks I'm a wimp by comparison. Maybe he's right.”

I had been thinking about some of the people who worked for Saberfox. I said, “In spite of his reputation as a heartless, cold fish, your brother seems to have a knack for instilling loyalty in some people. Brad Hillborough and Dana Hvide come to mind. You, too.”

Paul looked at his beer. “Loyalty is a funny thing. It can be a curse or a blessing. Saints and devils are probably equally loyal, only to different bosses.”

I emptied my glass. “Come on,” I said. “I'll take you home. We're beginning to talk philosophy.”

He grinned a crooked grin and finished his drink, and we left.

The next morning the phone rang while I was putting the last of the rinsed breakfast dishes in the drying rack. It was Joe Begay.

“I've got some information for you. You want it over the phone or do you fancy a ride out west to Indian country?”

It was a sunny, crisp day, with a chill blue sky arcing over the brown land. A good day for a drive. It might clear my head. I'd been thinking about the case, but not too well.

“I'll come up,” I said.

The wind was from the west. It was light but the waters off toward Block Island cooled it and made Aquinnah a few degrees colder than Edgartown, so I was glad when I got inside Joe's little house with a cup of coffee in my hand.

“You ask questions about interesting people,” said Joe. “A friend ran the prints on that cup and came up with a guy who hasn't been seen in more than forty years.”

“Who?”

“Fella named Juan Diego Valentine. Name ring any bells?”

“No.” But I instantly knew I was wrong. “Wait.” My hand flew up to my forehead.

Begay waited without expression, looking like one of his ancestors watching from a rimrock as a band of Spanish conquistadors come riding north out of Mexico.

I reached back into my memory for the name but couldn't quite find it. My hand came down. Why do we put our hands to our heads when we try to think?

“Tell me what you know,” I said.

Begay nodded. “Valentine was Spanish. His father and mother were both surgeons who worked for a world health organization and there was a younger daughter. The boy came to study at Tulane. Premed. Besides being a smart kid, he was a very fine athlete who seemed a sure bet for the 1960 Spanish Olympic team. He entered the United States in January of that year for his last semester at college but never showed up for his classes and hasn't been seen since. Sound familiar?”

“No. None of it.” Still, the name was niggling at me.

Begay sipped his coffee. “I shall proceed, as they say in the navy. INS has his prints, but no new prints have showed up anywhere else since he disappeared. That's quite a while between prints. How long have you had that coffee cup, anyway?”

“Not long. What else do you have?”

“Well, since my friend couldn't find any information about Valentine that was newer than 1960, he talked to some people in Madrid to see if he could find out anything that happened before that.” Begay shook his head and his mouth curled up at one corner. “You probably won't believe this, but on the morning of the day Juan Diego was scheduled to fly back to the United States for his last term at Tulane, he and another young hothead fought a duel over a girl. Yeah, just like in the movies. Swords at sunrise.

“Juan Diego, being a good hand with an épée, won without raising a sweat, but had to get out of the country in a hurry. That, of course, was pretty easy because he already had his plane ticket and the others involved—friends of both parties and the girl—were slow to tell anyone what had happened. Honor and family pride and all that sort of thing. I see a little light in your eyes, my friend. You've remembered something.”

“Yes. John Skye mentioned Valentine to me. Said he was supposedly the finest fencer of his day even though he'd never won a major championship of any kind.”

“And you now have his coffee cup in your possession. Congratulations.”

“What happened to the loser?”

“He seemed dead for sure, but wasn't. He recovered and he married the girl. How could she say no to a man who'd been willing to die for her? So much for the benefits of being the finest swordsman in Spain. As I recall, Cyrano didn't get Roxanne, either. You want to tell me anything about where and how you got that coffee cup?”

“I take it that when Valentine got to the United States he figured that the Spanish authorities would want him back to face homicide charges, so instead of going to Tulane, he decided to disappear.”

“So it would seem. There are thousands of illegal immigrants in this country. It's just that he's been around longer than most. He is still alive, isn't he?”

“If I tell you, I'll have to kill you. Do you fence?”

“You mean with foils and sabers and like that?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“We must be the only two people in the world who don't.”

“I had a bayonet when I was in the army. Does that count?”

When our families had partied on the beach together I'd seen a few scars on Joe's body that hadn't been there when I'd known him in that long-ago war where we'd met, so I had reason to believe that his current, unofficial work, whatever it was, obliged him to know more about cutting-edge weapons than he might admit.

I said, “I don't think a bayonet is quite the same thing. I'm surrounded by swordsmen. It's weird. For years I only knew one, John Skye, and now I've got them coming out of my ears.”

We drank our coffee.

“You need any more information about anybody?” asked Joe.

“Probably, but I don't know what it is.”

As I went out to my truck, Joe said, “Remember that Confucius say guns and swords are safest when you're standing behind them and maybe a little bit to one side.”

I thanked him for his wisdom and drove home, where I put a pair of latex gloves and some tape in my jacket pocket before driving to Oak Bluffs, where I found Paul Fox outside the Saberfox offices. He said he and Brad Hillborough were just going out to join Donald at the site of a prospective purchase.

“Where was Al Kirkland staying before he met his maker?” I asked.

Paul told me but added, “You can't go in the house because the police still have that yellow tape up. I guess the detectives don't want anyone disturbing evidence.”

My guess was that the detectives had probably already disturbed whatever evidence might have been there. I told Paul that all I wanted to do was check out how long it took to drive from Kirkland's rooms to the Fireside parking lot. Paul wondered why that might be important. I told him I wasn't sure it was, but it might be.

In my rearview mirror I could see him watching me as I drove away.

Al Kirkland had lived in a winterized cottage off Barnes Road, not far from where John Reilley lived in his underground home. I parked nearby and put on the latex gloves while I studied the neighborhood. There weren't many people around. When there were none in sight I used my lock picks and slipped inside the house, neatly ducking under the yellow police tape. It was my third successful illegal entry in less than a week. Maybe I had a genuine talent for a career in crime. It was worth thinking about.

Kirkland's place had that empty smell of uninhabited rooms and revealed little of his character or personality. The house had been rented furnished, and Kirkland had made no effort to personalize it in any way. His clothes still hung in a closet, his suitcase was still against a bedroom wall, and his razor and toothbrush were still in the cabinet over the wash-basin in the bathroom. A ballpoint pen and some sheets of notepaper were in the drawer of the bedside table, and a half-read paperback novel lay open and facedown on top of the table. When Kirkland had left home for the last time, he'd apparently had no reason to believe he'd not be coming back.

Not much seemed to have been disturbed by the police, although the furnace had been turned down until it was just warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing.

There were no business papers and there was no sign of his laptop computer.

I pawed through the clothes in the closet and through those in the bedroom bureau. I found nothing of interest. I peeked under the mattress and rugs and opened every cabinet I could find.

I looked through the refrigerator. Not much there. Kirkland, a lone male, apparently ate out instead of at home, as did many of his ilk. He could have saved himself some money and enjoyed some great meals if he'd learned how to cook. Too late now.

I didn't think the detectives had done much more detecting than I had. Why should they?

But just to be sure, I pulled out the drawers of the bureaus and peeked under them and behind them before replacing them, and looked behind whatever furniture was backed against a wall. Nothing.

Fine. Just because Kirkland had left no secret documents didn't mean he couldn't have left one in a place the cops hadn't found because they had no reason to look hard enough. I was sorry that his computer was gone. The cryptic message I planned to write might have seemed more authentic if it had been typed on his laptop. Ah, well, it's an imperfect world. The notepaper in the drawer of the bedside table would have to do.

Using the ballpoint pen and printing in block letters I wrote the brief document I had in mind. I addressed it to Donald Fox, dated it the day of the shooting, and printed out Kirkland's name at the bottom since I had never seen his signature. A poor fraud, but it would have to do. I folded the sheet, addressed it once more to Donald Fox, and taped it underneath a drawer of the bureau. An anonymous phone call to Fox should get the note into his hands, after which interesting things might happen.

I searched my conscience for guilt and found none. If I was wrong I could straighten things out later; if I was right, a lot of pressure would be put on a murderer.

I was going toward a window to check the emptiness of the street before leaving when the front door opened and Brad Hillborough limped in. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with March weather.

He pointed his cane at me and said, “Hello, there, Mr. Jackson. Surprised to see me?”

I was, but shouldn't have been. “I really should learn to lock doors behind me,” I said. “I presume you've been talking with Paul Fox.”

He looked around the room. “Yes. Little brother told me of your curiosity about Albert's house. I didn't believe the part about you only being interested in the distance from here to the Fireside parking lot. So here I am. Why are you really here?”

I'd anticipated the question. “I can't imagine why I should tell you that,” I said. “Now, if you'll excuse me.” I stepped toward the door.

He pushed it shut behind him and put his back against it. His face was chiseled and his eyes were bright and cold. “I think the police will be interested in why you've broken in here. If you don't explain your actions to me, you'll certainly be obliged to explain to a judge and jury.”

“I'll be glad to do that,” I said. “I'll tell them that I saw you break in and followed you to keep you from destroying evidence. I was just a citizen doing his best to prevent a crime.”

He actually smiled. “And when I tell them the truth, who will they believe?”

“We'll find out, won't we?” I stepped closer.

He didn't move. Instead he gripped his cane with both hands. The end of its handle was a solid knob of silver large enough, I thought, to brain anyone its wielder might want to brain. I wondered if his limp would slow him down enough to lessen the advantage the weapon gave him.

I stopped. But even as he gripped the cane, he was thinking.

“Why would I want to destroy evidence?” he asked. “What evidence?”

A change in my plans instantly occurred. “I was about to find out when you came in,” I said. “I've looked in the obvious places and was about to look in the less obvious ones. The ones I suspect the police never investigated.”

He was thoughtful. “What do you expect to find?”

I shrugged. “Something about the shooting of Paul Fox. Maybe Kirkland kept a diary.”

He eyed me carefully. “If there was a diary, the police would have taken it. Why do you think that Albert knew something about that shooting?”

“He was killed for a reason,” I said. “He was seen in the parking lot behind the Fireside a couple of days before the shooting, talking with someone in one of those green Range Rovers you guys favor. The night after the shooting, he gets himself killed in the same parking lot. He never went inside the Fireside in all the time he was on the island, but twice he meets somebody in the parking lot, with Paul Fox getting himself shot in between meetings. That's a lot of coincidence, don't you think?”

He shook his head. “Not enough to bring you here.”

“There's more. Kirkland was a pentathlon competitor back when you met him, according to Paul Fox and you.”

“So?”

“So he wasn't good enough to make the Olympic team. He wasn't much of a rider and only a so-so runner and swimmer. Is that how you remember him?”

Hillborough turned the cane in his hands. “More or less.”

“According to Paul Fox,” I went on, “Kirkland was all right as a fencer, but he had to be good at one of the five sports to think he had a chance. Paul didn't mention Kirkland being bad at pistol shooting, so I'm guessing he was good at it. They shoot air pistols in Olympic competition, but a pistol is a pistol and, if I'm right about Kirkland being good with one, that makes him a real candidate as the shooter, because whoever plugged Paul Fox put two thirty-eight slugs into Paul's chest right above his heart, and from a pretty good distance. It would take a good shot to do that.”

Hillborough shook his head. “The shots were meant for Donald, not his brother. It was the opposite of good shooting—it was terrible shooting.”

I put casual conviction into my voice. “No, the shots were for Paul. It wasn't a mistake. Kirkland knew what he was doing, and if Paul hadn't been wearing that vest that no one knew about, he'd be dead as you can get.”

Hillborough's eyes became oddly veiled. “That's nonsense. Why would Al Kirkland try to kill Paul?”

“People kill people for a lot of reasons.” I pretended to survey the room. “I came here to see if Kirkland left something behind that might tell us just what you want to know. An insurance policy of some kind.”

“What do you mean by an insurance policy?”

I moved away from him. “I mean something to protect himself in case he was threatened.”

“I don't follow you.”

“Of course you do. Kirkland was killed shortly after the attack on Paul Fox. He may have sensed that he was in danger and decided he needed a defense. As it turned out, his insurance policy, if he had one, did him no good. But if it exists and if we can find it, it might tell us who killed him.”

Hillborough's expression was wary, but he left the door and limped to the center of the next room, looking here and there as he moved. “Who did he fear? And why? Was it some angry property owner? There are such people, as I know all too well.” His voice had a bitter tone.

“Yes,” I said, “you know about such people. But as far as I know, Dodie Donawa is the only islander who's come after anybody working for Saberfox, and she was only after Paul for courting her daughter. No, I think somebody in the company got Kirkland to shoot Paul, then killed Kirkland to keep him from talking about it. I think Kirkland may have tried to protect himself by creating a document of some sort identifying the person who was behind the attack.” As I talked, I looked under pillows and pulled furniture from the walls and pretended to pay no attention to Hillborough.

Hillborough began looking into cupboards. “You're full of conjecture, aren't you? If Kirkland had such a document, why didn't it work? Why didn't it keep Kirkland alive? You're guessing, and guessing badly.”

But he kept on opening doors and peering inside them.

I stood in the middle of the bedroom and scratched my head as I looked around. “I don't know, but I can think of a couple of possibilities. Maybe the killer figured he could find the document before anybody else did, or maybe Kirkland got killed before he could say that he had one. A weapon is only a deterrent if the enemy knows you have it.”

Hillborough's lip curled. “Or, more probably, there was never such a document in the first place.”

I nodded agreeably. “Well, so far that seems to be the case. But we've just gotten started.”

For the next fifteen minutes I looked in wrong places, just to make my search seem legit. Then, when I finally peeked beneath the correct drawer and muttered, “Eureka,” I made sure that Hillborough was near enough to hear me.

I pulled the folded paper off the drawer and put a smug smile on my face. “Well, well, what have we here?”

Hillborough limped swiftly to me and reached out a hand. “Let me see that!”

“Hold your horses!” I said, but he snatched the paper from me.

“Get back!” he cried, shaking his cane in my face.

“That's addressed to your boss, not to you,” I protested, stepping back. “But the police should really have it.”

He stared at the paper, then suddenly unfolded it. As he read, he paled. I took two side steps toward the door.

“A forgery!” he cried. “Al Kirkland never wrote this! It's a trick!”

“What is it?” I asked, putting out a hand. “Let me see.”

He hobbled backward, keeping between me and the door. “Get away! This is none of your business!” But then his eyes widened. “Wait! You wrote this, didn't you? Of course you did! You want Donald to read it so he'll turn on me. You slime! You're worse than the others. Well, you won't get away with it.” He thrust the note into a pocket. “Donald will never see this!”

“Why? What does it say?”

He stepped toward me. There was a cold madness in his voice. “You know! You know!” He gripped his cane with both hands.

There was a light wooden chair about three feet behind me and to my left, and I thought I could get to it before he could reach me with the silver head of the cane.

“Let me guess,” I said. “It says that you gave Kirkland the orders and the pistol to kill Paul. It says that you hate Paul the way you hate everyone else who comes between you and Donald. It says you don't want Paul to take over the company and turn it into something different, something unlike what Donald has made it, and that you won't let that happen because it's not what Donald really wants, and that you've got some sort of sickness that makes Donald the center of your whole world. It says that Donald is the only person, the only thing, you love. It says that Kirkland is sorry about shooting Paul but is afraid of you, and that if anything fatal should happen to him, the police should arrest you for murder.

“Or words to that effect. How am I doing?”

“It's a forgery! Kirkland never wrote it—you did!”

“I don't really need the note,” I said. “All I need is a quick talk with Donald and the police. I'll tell them what's written in that letter. They can take it from there. Donald will know that it's true and he'll never forgive you because he loves his brother even more than he loves Saberfox. You and he are through.”

“You're not going to tell anything to anyone,” he said, and he twisted the handle of his cane. Out of the cane came a glimmering steel blade, and as it leveled toward me, he lunged.