Death in Vineyard Waters (14 page)

“Oh, I think not. Tristan realized from the beginning that his theories were apt to be dismissed as nonsense by the traditional academicians, and no one was more Establishment than Marjorie. In her own way, of course. She was a great pooh-pooher of hacks, even if they were in total agreement with conservative scholarship, but she herself was, at the same time, on the right wing of academic theoreticians. She abhorred what she saw as revisionist scholarship, and therefore naturally held Tristan's work to be nonsense.

“You've surely observed, Mr. Jackson, that what is often called intellectual objectivity is really not that at all, but is rather a psychological predisposition to interpret evidence in one way rather than in another. I suspect that both Marjorie and Tristan knew that on some level and thus were able to remain friends even though they radically disagreed.”

“Marjorie, Tristan, and Ian McGregor all worked at Weststock College, I understand.”

“In Renaissance Literature. Both Marjorie and Ian did graduate work at Northern Indiana, I think. I know Northern has an outstanding program in that area. Of course they were more than a generation apart. I think she was on the committee that hired him at Weststock. Maybe because his degree was from the same place as hers.”

“They were friends, then.”

Again she laughed. A bit more wryly this time? “Perhaps. There are rumors about Marjorie and Tristan and there are rumors about Ian and, well, many women. Both Ian and Tristan get along with women very well. But I doubt if Marjorie was Ian's friend in the way women usually are.”

“I understand that you're his friend. Or were.”

She was silent for a moment. “His women rarely abandon Ian. It's a tribute to his charm. He simply slides away after achieving his little victories. There are exceptions, of course.”

“One of the exceptions' boyfriend got punched out by Ian McGregor, I'm told.”

“Is that a fact? I hadn't heard, but I can't say I'm really surprised. Ian is said to have done the same before. Tell me more. I love gossip!”

“I like it myself. Were you Marjorie's friend?”

“No. You can't be friends with someone who considers you a fool. But I respected her.”

“Do you think she committed suicide?”

“No. I saw those hints in the papers, but I don't believe them. She was a very strong person.”

“Was she honest?”

“What? What do you mean? Why do you ask that?”

“I'm not sure. I'm just trying to learn as much as I can about her. So far, I'm not having much luck.”

“I think she was honest. I certainly never had any reason to think otherwise.”

“And Ian McGregor?”

Her laugh was touched with ice this time. “Ian is a romancer. Are sweet nothings lies? He likes to win at the games he plays.”

“The game of love?”

“That. Tennis, too. He likes to win at everything. I think he'd tell you that himself.”

“How does he take losing?”

“With manly charm, of course. But it doesn't happen often. He's the kind of guy who, if he loses to you at chess, will go home and study nothing else for two weeks and then come back and beat you. And that will be done charmingly, too, so you won't be mad.”

“You're not mad? You're still his friend?”

“No, I'm not mad. You can't be mad at Ian.”

“I'm told that Bill Hooperman managed it.”

“My, you
do
hear a lot, Mr. Jackson.”

“Did Marjorie Summerharp ever mention someone she knew here on the island who might have met her at the beach that last day? Somebody with a Jeep, maybe, or a boat?”

“No. But then I scarcely saw her here. As far as I know, she used to come down here years ago, so perhaps she knew many people. I think she normally summered on the Maine coast where her family lives. Are you free about sixish the day after tomorrow?”

I was taken off guard. “I'm not sure. Why?”

“I'm having a cocktail party. I'd like it if you came. I didn't have a chance to say hello at John's place, and I simply
must
hear the details of Ian's latest brawl.”

“Well . . .”

“You'll see a sign on the left between Beetlebung Corner and Menemsha. Come casual. I do hope you will.”

I remembered Hooperman looking down her blouse. I remembered looking down it myself.

“Thanks for the invitation,” I said.

It was a cool, gusty morning when I met Zee at the Katama parking lot at five. There was a brisk southwesterly wind blowing, and high swells in long windrows were humping in and then breaking on the sand, sending spume high into the air. A storm somewhere off to the south was sending its messengers ahead of it. The eastern sky was shot with color as the sun climbed up behind racing clouds. There was a hint of rain in the air.

“Not the best weather for fishing,” said Zee, climbing into the Landcruiser after putting her rod on the roof rack. She put her tackle box on the floor between her feet.

“We can try Wasque first, and if there's nothing there we can fish East Beach.”

“It could be worse. It could be an east wind. I never seem to catch much with an east wind.”

I drove east on the edge of Katama Bay. There were snowy egrets and oyster catchers mixed with the gulls and terns, all seemingly enjoying the change in the weather. It was too early for the quahoggers to be out in the bay working their big rakes, trying to make a day's wages. A tough way to earn a dollar any time. Worse than usual with the wind blowing up whitecaps.

“How's windsurfing?” I asked.

“Fun. I don't even know how to sail a regular boat, but after a while I got it going a little bit. Ian just whips the board around. I imagine he'd like a wind like this one.”

No doubt. “I looked over toward the beach between five and six and I saw some surf sailors going up and down. I couldn't tell if any of them was you.”

“No, none of them was me. We didn't stay too long.”

We didn't? “Why not? It looked like a perfect day. Not too much wind.”

She pointed to a blue heron standing in the shallows near the clam flats. A pretty bird. “It's hard to say, exactly,” she said. “Somehow I felt like a fool. I mean I don't mind feeling like a fool sometimes because I am sometimes, but somehow
I felt like Ian wanted me to know that I was a little bit foolish. It happened when I fell off the board or when I couldn't get it to turn. He'd show me how to do it right, but somehow . . . He was so good at it that maybe he couldn't really understand why I was making mistakes. He was patient and never really said anything, but . . .” She made a small gesture with her hands, and when I glanced at her she showed me a comic, rueful face. “I doubt if I know what I'm talking about. Maybe I just imagined it all. Ian never really said or did anything to make me feel that way.”

“You can't be mad at Ian,” I quoted.

She gave me a quizzical look. “That's right. That's absolutely right. You can't.”

We came onto the Wasque Reservation. There were fresh four-by-four tracks ahead of us, and we followed them east over the bathing beach, where no bathers would be beaching today because of the weather. At Wasque Point two trucks were parked and we could see rods casting.

“Maybe there's something there!” said Zee, perking up.

We pulled alongside the nearest truck and saw fish lying on the sand. Nice eight- to ten-pounders. Zee arched her brows and opened the door. By the time I had my rod off the roof, she was down in the surf making her cast. I had time to note that she was using a red-headed Missile for a plug. Halfway in, a nice fish took her lure and she hauled back and set the hook. I watched her bring the fish in, keeping the line tight and walking to the east under the rods of the other fishermen until she had the fish in the surf and then timing the next wave just right and letting it help her bring the thrashing bluefish up onto the beach. She gave me a grin as she slipped her hand into the gills and carried the fish to the Landcruiser.

“Well, don't just stand there,” she yelled over the sound of the surf. “Catch something!”

Three casts later I saw the swirl of white water and felt my first fish hit the plug. As I reeled in I glanced at Zee
and saw that she had another one. Side by side we brought them in and up onto the beach.

“Not too shabby.” Zee grinned as we stood together at the Landcruiser and dug the hooks out of the fish's razor-teethed mouths.

Not too shabby indeed. With the wind in our faces and the waves coming in high and noisy, we fished for two hours, and when the blues finally went away, there were a dozen four-by-fours on the beach and we had both my fish boxes piled high. We put our rods on the roof rack and broke out the coffee and doughnuts.

“I got a hundred and twenty-seven,” I said. “How about you?”

“I got a hundred and twenty-eight,” said Zee, “and all of them are bigger than yours.”

“How do you know which ones are yours?”

“I mark mine in a special way.”

“What way?”

“I'm not telling. If I tell, you'll begin to mark yours that way, too, just so you can claim that mine are really yours.”

Between us we had forty-two nice fish, all a bit under ten pounds. We drank coffee and ate doughnuts.

“If this coffee was the right kind of beer, I could say it doesn't get any better than this,” I said.

“You can still say it,” said Zee.

We looked out through the windshield at the last few die-hard fishermen making casts into the fishless sea. The wind was rising and the spray had soaked everyone pretty well through. I turned on the radio and found the Rhode Island country and western station I can, for some reason, pick up on Wasque. Dolly Parton's voice danced like a flute's as she sang of abandonment and sorrow. C & W music, even when it's sappy, is at least intended for grown-ups, unlike the teenage orientation of rock and roll and other pop stuff. Dolly sang like a bird.

“Remember when you taught me how to fish?” asked Zee.

“Yes.”

“I had my waders on and you said I looked like five pounds of shit in a ten-pound bag.”

“Yes, but that was only because you thought I was after your bod and not solely interested in improving your fishing skills, and I had to prove to you that you were wrong.”

“But you showed me how to cast anyway and you never once made me feel stupid.”

“That's because I was after your bod and not solely interested in improving your fishing skills, and I knew that if I made you feel stupid you'd be mad at me since, my masculine intuition told me, you were, among other things, an intellectual snob.”

“And you've never made me feel stupid since, either.”

“No one should ever try to do that. And if they try, you come and tell me and I'll go punch out their lights.”

“When I want you to go punch out somebody's lights on my behalf, I'll let you know. I can take care of myself. I want macho, I'll go see an old John Wayne movie.”

“Well, don't get in a huff,” I said. “We truly manly men can't help but take a protective attitude toward womenfolk. It's in our glands. It's hard for us to restrain ourselves when our little women are in peril.” I took another doughnut.

“What are you going to say when you die and go to heaven and find out that God is female?”

“Tell her I'm lost and ask directions?”

“Good idea. I'm sure she'll give them to you.”

“You want to drive up to Cape Pogue and see where they've moved the lighthouse?”

“Didn't we do that a couple of weeks ago?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, let's do it again. But we can't be gone too long. We don't want these fish to go soft.”

The drive to Cape Pogue is one of the loveliest on Martha's Vineyard. We drove past Leland's Point and up East Beach to the bathing beach outside of the Dike Bridge. There I
turned in and took the road along the edge of Cape Pogue Pond. There were some giant quahogs out there in the pond, the biggest I ever saw, but you could only get to them by boat, and I hadn't tried for any for a long time. One day I'd toss the dinghy in the back of the Landcruiser, drive over here, and take the boat across to where the quahogs are. In a day I could get enough for a year's worth of chowder.

“When we left the beach yesterday,” Zee said suddenly, “I told Ian I didn't want to see him anymore.”

A bit later she turned off the radio. “If you're going to whistle,” she said, “you can't have the radio on. It's one or the other, but not both.” I gave Zee a big smile. “Don't break your face,” she said with a little smile of her own.

We drove up to see the lighthouse at its new site and then around under the cliff where it had stood before, which was now washing slowly away before winter storms and revealing old foundations of brick, once-underground pipes, and other signs of departed buildings. Then we drove back along the miles of beach to her Jeep. As we drove, the whitecaps thickened and the wind rose. I felt very good.

“I'll sell the fish and hold your split till you pick it up,” I said.

“Let's spend it together on something outrageous. An expensive meal somewhere.”

I ran the math through my head: forty-two fish at say nine pounds each at say forty cents a pound was . . . what? My heart was thumping and interfering with my brain. Not a difficult task. I concentrated. A hundred and twenty bucks or so, all told, half of it Zee's. Between us, we could get a couple good meals even on Martha's Vineyard. “Okay,” I said. “When?”

A long strand of her hair had escaped the kerchief she wore when fishing and was blowing out straight. Along the beach the waves were building. Something was brewing down the coast and was coming this way.

Zee caught the wild strand and tucked it away. “How about Friday, I've got the night shift until then.”