Death in Vineyard Waters (27 page)

“He shouldn't tell us,” said John, “he should tell the police, if he tells anybody. I guess I should give them a call.” He walked frowning toward the kitchen.

At the far end of the library, Doctors Barstone and Hooperman had stopped dancing and were kissing. Zee and I followed John out of the room and left the victors alone. I was thinking of the tale of the serpent in Eden and wondering about its moral. Was it that in every garden there is a serpent or that for every serpent there is a garden? Both the serpent and the garden were beautiful and both were tempters, the serpent offering a nibble from the fruit of the tree of knowledge and the garden offering the sweet bliss of innocence. Which was the most dangerous? Which offered the greatest blessing?

As I drove Zee home, I told her about the Man Who Craps. The Man Who Craps is a little figure of a guy wearing a red fez who is squatting and shitting on the ground, his trousers down around his ankles. He was brought to me
by a friend who had been in Barcelona during the Christmas season and who, while browsing through Catalonia's markets, had come across the figure amid other figures who were in the traditional Christmas crèches: Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, angels, shepherds, donkeys, sheep, cattle, and so forth. In Catalonia, Christmas crèches are apparently very popular, for the figures are for sale everywhere in all sizes and for all prices. But my friend had never seen the Man Who Craps as part of the scene and had been sufficiently fascinated to purchase two, one of them for me. Curious, my friend had asked acquaintances the significance of the obscene figure being mixed in with the other more traditional figures and had in time been given the following explanation: In Catalonia there were, in fact, three figures not elsewhere found in the crèche: the Man Who Craps, a woman washing clothes, and a fisherman at work. They signified that at the moment of the birth of the only son of God, surely the most sacred and important event since the beginning of time, all of the very human activities that normally took place continued to take place. Nothing really changed. Everything that usually happened continued to happen. Clothes still needed to be washed, fish needed to be caught, and shit needed to be shat. Life went on as it always does in spite of the miracle.

Or in spite of death. Marjorie Summerharp's or anyone else's.

At Christmas, when I put up my little crèche, around in back, modestly out of sight, I always put the Man Who Craps, because I like what he stands (or squats) for: life going on in spite of doom or marvel.

I suddenly became aware of my monologue. “I am a famous babbler,” I said.

Zee hooked her arm in mine. “You left-bank undergraduates pretend you're existentialists, but all the girls know you're just frustrated idealists.”

“God,” I said. “It's such a relief to be understood at last. Does this mean that I can go back and live with Mom and
Dad again and that I don't have to wear this damned beret any longer?”

“You got it, cookie,” said Zee. “You can start teaching your Sunday school classes again and join the Rotary Club.”

“Oh, I'm so happy! You're an angel. Let's get married right away.”

“No. I've been so inspired by your return to normalcy that I've decided to enter a nunnery just like my Aunt Sylvia always wanted. I'll pray for you daily.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“There, there. Just think of Warren Harding and everything will be all right.”

We pulled up in front of her door. “Are you sure you have to enter the nunnery right away?” I asked.

“Actually,” she said, running her tongue along her lips and looking up at me, “I thought I might put it off until tomorrow.”

In the morning, the rising sun poured red light through her window and touched her sleeping face with radiance. I watched her for a long time, then slipped away and made breakfast for us both and brought it back on a tray. She was sitting up, looking as lovely as a goddess, smiling. My heart thumped.

An hour later she drove to work and I drove home. She had again declined to marry me but on the other hand had decided to give up the nunnery. Things could have been worse. As I drove east into the rising sun, clouds were building in the sky. I turned on the radio and learned that we were to have rain that night and a bit of wind. I wondered if it would wash out our date with Tristan Cooper and his standing stones.

At home I dug around and found the
Gazette
editions reporting on Marjorie Summerharp's death and reread them. I had been dumb once again. If I'd been smarter, I could have saved myself a split lip. I got into the Landcruiser and drove into Edgartown.

There I parked on Green Avenue, where the meter maids
never trod, and walked down Main Street. On Dock Street I found the chief trying to fit a cup of coffee into his day. Beyond him, tall sails moved out of the harbor toward the Sound, pushed by a following wind. I watched him sip from his Styrofoam cup and move his eyes here and there, as was his habit.

“Well?” he said.

“Did John Skye call you about the dissertations?”

“Yes, he did. So what?”

“So maybe there's a motive for murder in them.”

“Ian McGregor's motive for murdering Marjorie Summerharp, I take it.”

“Could be.”

“Do you believe it?”

“I'm just an amateur snoop. You're the professional officer of the law.”

“Hereabout it's the official policy to let the state cops handle murder investigations, the theory being, apparently, that we local types aren't bright enough or well trained enough to deal with such sophisticated crime. But as even you know, so far we don't have a murder here, just an accidental death.”

“I think you have more than that.”

“And now you think McGregor's the guy?”

“I think that if I was a real live policeman I might rank him as a legit suspect. He had motive.”

“I hate to repeat myself, although with you I should expect to. Do you think that McGregor's the guy?”

“As a matter of fact, I doubt it.”

“Really? My, my. I thought you were the fellow who had him taking the victim down to the beach in the early hours and running her outside on his surfboard, then faking a six o'clock drive to the beach wearing her bathing cap. What made you change your mind, if I may ask so simple a question of so complex a thinker? Now use short words—I don't want to get out of my depth.”

“You may be just a poor hick cop living off parking tickets
and small-town graft, but even you can grasp this. Marjorie Summerharp only had one bathing suit and one bathing cap, and according to the
Gazette
I just reread she was wearing both when the
Mary Pachico
found her. The driver of her car was wearing a white cap that morning. Unless McGregor managed to buy himself one in the middle of the night, he couldn't have been wearing one at six that morning. Ergo, it
was
Marjorie driving her car down to the beach just when McGregor said she did. Ergo again, he didn't do her in. He just didn't have time to do that and still be seen running on the bike path when witnesses saw him there.” I touched my split lip. “Besides, McGregor isn't the killing type. I gave him a chance to try to do a real number on me and he didn't take it. I don't think he could kill somebody if he wanted to and I don't think he'd want to. Most people are like that.”

“I don't know what most people are like or what a killing type is, but then I'm just a poor hick cop going broke on local graft. But I'm glad to hear that you've finally come around to believing what everybody else knew all along.”

“All I'm saying is that McGregor didn't kill her. But that still doesn't explain how she ended up where she did when she did.”

He crumpled his cup and dropped it into a waste barrel. “I know. For what it's worth, I've been talking with the state cops about this whole thing for the last three weeks. I understand that they're asking some questions on the mainland, trying to get a lead on what might have happened down here. It's still an accidental death, but the D.A. knows that it might be something more. Before I trudge off to protect and serve, do you have any other tidbits you'd like to add to my collection?”

“Two. First, Sanctuary keeps a couple of sailboats and a sportfisherman on South Beach. Second, there's reason to think that some of the girls and maybe some of the boys who work up there offer sexual favors to the customers but
keep their mouths shut about it because they're illegal aliens trying to make some money to send back home to the poor folks.”

“So?”

“So Marjorie Summerharp talked about writing an exposé about Sanctuary, and the Van Dams, who run the place, knew about it. They own a boat they might have used to pick her up at South Beach. Motive and opportunity. Don't thank me, just make sure I get the reward.”

“Hmmmm,” he hmmmed thoughtfully, and actually walked off without making some sarcastic remark.

17

I had a coffee at the Dock Street Coffee Shop and watched the cook perform his graceful act at the grill, thinking again that anything done well is beautiful, then walked back through town, got the Landcruiser, and took the ferry across to Chappy. I hadn't hunted the blues between Wasque and the Cape Pogue gut for days, and I needed to get at it.

By four I was home again. The sky was overcast and the wind was brisk from the southwest. I showered and climbed into chinos and boat shoes, had a fast vodka on ice, grabbed my topsider, and went to pick up Zee.

She was waiting and climbed in beside me. “You're clouding,” she said as we drove west. “When you're thinking about something, a little black cloud sits on your forehead. It's there now.”

“The curse of the great intellectuals,” I said. “Our mark of Cain. We're doomed to think all the time, whether we want to or not.”

“Pure affectation as far as you're concerned,” said Zee. “Intellectuals make lousy lovers because they're always thinking about what they're doing. The same can't be said for you, that's for sure. You're a part-time thinker at best, I'm glad to say.”

“Maybe you're right. I won't do it anymore. I have a hard time doing it when you're around anyway.”

“I've noticed. Why are you clouding?”

“I'm not clouding.” I willed my cloud away.

“Why
were
you clouding?”

“I was clouding about the same thing I've been clouding about for the last month—how Marjorie Summerharp ended up dead. Here we are.” I turned off and drove along Tristan Cooper's driveway. We passed the graveyard and came to his house. Off to the southwest beyond Nomans Land storm clouds were darkening the sky, but rain seemed far off, if it was coming at all. Plenty of time for a tour of Tristan's grounds before the first drops fell. The overcast and wind made both land and sea seem older and wilder.

Tristan Cooper met us at his door, his simian face and strong brown hands thrusting forth from a turtleneck jersey.

“So glad you could come. I propose an exploratory walk first and afterward something to warm our bones while we talk. Or would you like coffee first? No? Then come along. The wind lends charm to these sites, I think.”

For an hour we walked his land as he spoke of the ancient stones scattered across it: the Altar, the equinox and solstice stones, the temple to Bel, the dolmen, a “gravestone” faintly marked with what Tristan took to be Iberian writing. His voice was on the surface cool and academic, but there was no disguising his love of his subject. Such a professor, I thought, might by pure passion draw students into his subject, whatever it might be; might fire them with the fire within himself and produce a race of scholars to change the face of academe.

Zee, ever sensitive to honest feeling and new thought, was fascinated and delighted, and he, ever a man who liked
women, sensed her response and spun a web of words about her, flashing me a strong-toothed smile as he did so, so I would know that he knew that I knew. I could not find it in me to be angry but instead only hoped that at eighty I would possess half his magic.