Death in Vineyard Waters (18 page)

“Charm, schmarm,” said John. “Well, at least the phones are still working. We'll probably be over tomorrow. Terrible news about Marjorie. Ian will be around until Sunday. Maybe we can all get together before he leaves.”

“Ian said something about getting together with me.”

“Fine. I hope you saved me a few fish.”

“I think there are still a couple swimming around someplace.”

The rain slashed down all afternoon. At five I put on my Vineyard cocktail party clothes and my topsider and drove up island. Between Beetlebung Corner and Menemsha was a sign saying Barstone. I turned in. There were several cars in the yard of the house. A little gale does not inhibit the island's cocktail set. There was a crowd inside the house drinking Helen Barstone's booze. I joined them.

Helen Barstone was wearing a red dress that was cut high in the front and low in the back and set her fine figure off well indeed. She saw me come in and came right to me. She had a few drinks head start. In a far corner I saw Hooperman frown as he watched her.

“I'm so glad you could come. What should I call you? J. W.? John told me your initials, but not what they stood for.”

“J. W. is fine.”

“And I'm Helen.” She stood on her toes and gave me one of those cheek-against-cheek kisses where the lips never actually touch skin. With her mouth close to my ear, she said, “The rest of these people are just here for drinks, but you're invited for supper afterward. I'd like to get to know you.”

“And I'd like to talk to you.”

“Oh, dear, nothing impersonal, I hope.”

“Not to me.”

She smiled and took my arm. “Excellent. Now, let me escort you to the bar and then introduce you to some people.”

She did that, and I watered the small smile on my face with glasses of vodka on ice as I listened to cocktail conversations in the up-island mode, and was introduced to ladies in pastels and men in red trousers and boat shoes who spoke of art galleries, New York financial doings, and the dangers of development on the Vineyard. There was less yachty talk than at Edgartown cocktail parties, but otherwise not too much difference. Girls in casual party clothes carried trays of excellent hors d'oeuvres from group to group, and the bar was generous in its portions. I exchanged brief pleasantries with Hooperman, who put a false smile on his face to match my own. Finally, everybody else left and Helen Barstone and I were alone.

“I thought your husband might be here,” I said.

“Warren? Oh, no. Warren only comes on weekends. The rest of the time I'm a bachelor girl. Bill Hooperman sometimes thinks I belong to him on weekdays, but as you see, you're here and he isn't. I tell him he should bring his wife down, but she won't leave Cambridge. Poor Bill.”

The serving girls had cleared the clutter from the party and taken it all into the kitchen before leaving, but the table holding the bottles was still there. Helen Barstone went to it and poured herself a nice jolt, then took my arm and led me to a couch. “Sit down. Let's relax before we eat. These parties are fun, but I'm always glad when they've ended. Do you feel that way, too?”

“At my parties the guests stay as long as they please. If I don't enjoy them, I don't invite them.”

“Well, you must invite me the next time.” She had a silvery laugh.

“It may be a while. I do a lot of my drinking alone.”

“Do you? Isn't that dangerous? I'm sure that's one indication of alcoholism.”

“An island ailment for sure.”

She adjusted her skirt, and when she was done she was closer. She smelled like gin and expensive perfume. Not a bad combination. My arm was across the back of the couch. My hand was near her shoulder. She took it in hers. “So scarred,” she said, “so rough. But it's a strong hand.”

“All fishermen have scarred hands.”

“The men I know have soft hands.”

“Soft hands, hard hearts?”

She was amused. “Hard hands, soft heart? I see I must be wary of you, J. W.” She drank half her glass, then set it on the coffee table and slid closer. “Tell me about yourself,” she said.

“Tell me about Tristan Cooper,” I said. “You and Dr. Hooperman have been interviewing him. What sort of guy is he? And what's this theory of his all about?”

“I'd rather talk about you.”

I put my arm around her shoulders. “I'd rather talk about Tristan Cooper. I'm going to see him and I'd like to know who I'm dealing with. I'd also like to know about Sanctuary. We can talk about me later.”

“Rats,” she said, “you aren't as malleable as I'd hoped. All right, I'll let myself be bullied. But why do you want to know about Tristan and Sanctuary?”

“Because Marjorie Summerharp had unkind words to say about them and because they're in Chilmark and Chilmark is west of the spot where the dragger pulled in her body.”

“I don't understand.”

I told her about the problem of Marjorie Summerharp's body with respect to time and tides.

She pulled away and stared at me. “Good God, you surely don't think Tristan had anything to do with her death?”

“I don't know anything about him. But the facts are that he knew her, that they'd argued, and that he lives in a part of the island where her body might have entered the water. The same is true of the Van Dams.”

“Well, as I told you, the argument between her and Tristan was purely academic and was long past the time when
either of them were passionate about it. As for the Van Dams, well . . .” She settled back into the circle of my arm and took my hand again. “Well, they're hardly what I'd call the murdering sort. Religious phonies, probably. Money grubbers, absolutely. Panderers, I'd bet on it. But murderers? I doubt it.”

“Panderers?”

She reached for her drink and got it. “I couldn't care less, but yes, I'd bet on it. Have you been up there?”

“No.”

“I was. Once. By mistake. We were on our way to visit Tristan the first time and we took the Sanctuary road because that's where his mailbox is. As it turned out, the main houses and outbuildings on the Cooper farm are all Sanctuary places now, and Tristan is living in one of the cottages a half mile away that's reached by another road. But by the time we got that all straightened out, I had a chance to look around.”

“And?”

“And the guests are all rich and the help is all young and beautiful. Beautiful boys and beautiful girls. I got the picture pretty fast. Later Tristan more or less confirmed it.”

“He told you that Sanctuary was offering sex to its clients along with its other therapies?”

“No.” She giggled. “A couple of weeks later, as I was driving up to see Tristan I saw one of the girls I'd seen at Sanctuary slip away from his house. She wasn't quite dressed.”

“A dark-haired girl with a good tan?”

She stared up at me. “A redhead, actually. Why did you say that?”

“Just a bad guess. I was told that he liked that type.”

“Maybe he does, but Tristan's tastes are apparently catholic. It's heartening to know that being eighty-four doesn't keep some men from liking women and knowing how to please them.”

“I'm told that Tristan has always had women in his life.”

“Yes. He doesn't talk about them, but I've talked with old-timers at Weststock and they say he was a pistol while he was there. Two divorces, other women, a couple of fairly serious scandals . . .” Her voice was getting thicker as the drinks relaxed her.

“What kind of scandals?”

“Scandals. Fights, I think. The people I talked to were a bit fuzzy about details. Tristan had a wild streak in him, at any rate.”

“But now he doesn't.”

“He's eighty-four years old, for God's sake.” The glass slipped in her hand and spilled on her dress before falling me a kiss,” she said, tilting her head back against my arm and pursing her lips.

I bent my head and kissed those wet red lips. Her fingers squeezed mine. After a while she pulled away, gasping. She got unsteadily to her feet. “Dinner can wait,” she said in a slurred voice. “Give me just a minute then come in.” She waved an arm toward the back of the house and wandered off in the direction she had pointed. After I finished my drink, I picked up her fallen glass, took it and my own into the kitchen, then walked back and found her bedroom. She was on her back on the bed, snoring gently. I pulled off her shoes and covered her with a blanket I found in her closet and went home and cooked my own supper.

About ten o'clock the wind began to die and the rain started to slack off. The storm had moved on.

The next morning I drove down to Katama to do some quahogging. As I pulled onto the beach, I met George Martin coming off. He held out a hand and we stopped side by side.

“I hope you're not planning to bluefish off of Wasque this morning,” he said.

“Littlenecking,” I said, pointing to the rake on my roof rack.

“A good thing,” said George. “The storm punched an opening through the beach down at the clam flats. Chappy's an island again. If you want to fish Wasque, you'll need a boat or you'll have to take the Chappy ferry.”

12

Most of the time the island of Chappaquiddick isn't an island at all, but a peninsula linked to the Vineyard by a spit of sand along South Beach called, on some maps, Norton's Point.

It's called Norton's Point because from time to time a storm comes along and knocks a channel through the sand spit; Chappy becomes an island and the sand spit west of the opening becomes a point named after a local fisherman of yore. Between the two, the tides flow to and fro, into Katama Bay on the rising tide and back into the sea on the ebb. Boatmen, if they can find a channel deep enough for their vessels, take advantage of the opening to save themselves the long trip around Cape Pogue; when the tidal river isn't too fast, young people ride inner tubes downstream through the opening.

When the tide is falling and the winds and surf are strong from the south, the opening is a dangerous place. The outflowing tide meets the wind-driven surf and there is a wild, swirling sea, with crashing waves, whirling currents, and a shifting of sands. Where once a channel was, there may now be shallow sandbars to seize your boat and break it under thundering surf. A sailor tossed from his boat may be knocked down again and again by the surf as he strives for shore until he cannot rise again.

Normally such openings are short lived. As the tides move along the southern shore, the sands build along the western edge of the opening and the opening moves slowly to the east until, finally, it fills and is no more. Norton's Point is no longer a point and Chappaquiddick is again a peninsula. And the fishermen can once more drive their four-by-fours to Wasque to fish the rip.

But that was days or weeks away. Now, Wasque was hard to reach. I'd have to take the ferry or a boat I didn't have. My dinghy was too small for the trip, particularly at night or if the sea was rough.

I drove down the beach until I fetched the opening. The water was flowing out at a considerable rate. Outside, the spray was flying as the flow met the last swells from the passed storm. The surf smashed the beach on either side of the opening and roiled into the air in mid-channel. There would be bluefish and maybe bass there, I thought. I'd have to give it a try later.

Inside Katama Bay the clam flats had taken a real beating. The nice flat next to Chappy had been torn away in part and would be eaten away even further before the opening was closed again. At least a season of clamming would be lost there. Maybe more. Bad luck for me, since I liked to work those flats. But Nature cares nothing for clammers such as me, and I thought that was as it ought to be. I prefer the indifferent universe. The idea of it allows me to understand good and evil better than if I were to believe in a God who bends over the earth with, ah, bright wings.

Other fishermen and sightseers soon gathered on the point and examined the opening. We'd not had one for several years, and it was a phenomenon of general curiosity. Islanders have a natural interest in the power of wind and water, and so the opening was soon lined with Jeeps and pickups. We all watched the water pour out of Katama Bay and smash into the dying swells of the storm.