Murder at a Vineyard Mansion (10 page)

“What next?”

Diana knew. “Just click the first one, Pa. Put your cursor right here and click.”

I clicked and found myself face-to-face with more information about opera than I knew existed. I read some of it.

“Okay, how do I get out of here?”

“Just click on that X up there in the corner, Pa.”

I clicked and the page listing opera sites reappeared.

“Now what?”

“Click the X again.”

I did and I was back where I'd started. The children gave me looks of congratulation. In exchange I gave up my chair to Joshua.

“You did very well,” said Zee, patting my knee. “See, both you and the computer survived.”

As I watched Joshua I decided that we'd done the right thing to buy the machine. Not only was I feeling better than I'd imagined I would, but my wife and children were happy and there seemed to be an almost unlimited amount of information available to us right there in our own house.

It was too bad that none of it had to do with the investigation I was making. I had bitten off a hard chaw and wasn't using my time well, as was clearly shown by the fact that although Harold Hobbes's murder was the subject of my inquiries, I'd somehow learned more about the Bradfords, the Piersons, and Ollie Mattes.

It was time to get back to Harold. I wondered where he had been the night that Ollie had died. He wouldn't tell his mother, even though he'd been afraid he might be accused of killing Ollie. I thought of the long black veil and of the man who'd been hung for murder rather than admit to having been in the arms of his best friend's wife at the time of the killing. Had Harold been in someone's arms that night? Was he so foolish or noble that, like the guy in the song, he'd die rather than reveal her name? And how about the best friend's wife? She hadn't said a word when they hung her lover.

Was there a link between Harold's mysterious night journey and his death? I watched as Joshua gave his chair to his little sister and thought how nice it would be if I could go on the Internet and type “Harold Hobbes's murder” and learn where he'd been that night, who had killed him, and why.

My computer couldn't tell me that, but some human could.

During the summer there are over one hundrd thousand people on Martha's Vineyard. Of these, fifteen thousand, more or less, are year-round residents, which is about the same number as in a medium-sized town. As is the case in most such towns, the island's citizenry is a collection of different social groups, many of which know little about the others. On the Vineyard the separateness of these groups is emphasized by the fact that the island consists of six different townships, among which there are historical conflicts and ancient animosities. There are ten different police forces, six different fire departments, and a half dozen school systems, town offices, and highway departments. The regional high school, which was only built after decades of argument, is still the subject of passionate contention among citizens who favor it and those who think it never should have been built. The island also has groups of people who can be differentiated by vocation, avocation, interests, and proclivities.

Harold Hobbes had belonged to one or more of the various subdivisions of Vineyard society, the most obvious being that group of Chappaquiddick residents who, given their druthers, would have made a gated community of their peninsula. His mother, Maud, was chief among these defenders of Chappy turf, but she had already told me that she knew nothing of her late son's private life other than that he had had many women and his confession that he was the window breaker at Ron Pierson's mansion-in-progress. I'd have to go to some other guardian of Chappy to seek additional information about Harold's private life.

This plan posed two problems for me. First, the police, during the days since Harold's death, would almost certainly have already interviewed the Chappy people I might want to talk to and those people might see no good reason to talk to me, too. Second, even if the police hadn't talked to those people, they might not want to talk to me, since it was not a secret that I was in favor of open beaches on Chappaquiddick and everywhere else on the Vineyard. This was one of my two public postures in a life otherwise devoted to staying out of arguments, the other being opposition to the closing of open land to traditional uses such as hunting, hiking, and picnicking, and it was probably enough to get me viewed by the Chappy privatizers as an enemy.

I would have to give some thought to how to infiltrate that fortress mentality, but meanwhile there were other people I could talk to. One of them was Dennis Wilcox.

Dennis was a fisherman who worked out of Edgartown, usually with Silas Look as crew. His boat was the
Lucy Diamond,
a forty-footer he kept on a stake between the Yacht Club and Reading Room dock, not far from where we kept the
Shirley J.
He had a string of conch traps and did party fishing during the derby. Now and then, just to keep his hand in, he'd mount a pulpit on the
Lucy
's bow and go with a few friends down to the Dump, south of No Man's Land, looking for swordfish. He wasn't the best harpooner on the island because he didn't get much practice, but he wasn't bad, and I'd gotten many pounds of fresh swordfish from him over the years.

I went down to the docks early the next morning, to catch him before he went out, because traps need to be tended whether or not it's the Sabbath. I saw that he was already on his boat, so I got my dinghy and rowed out there. There wasn't much wind and the water was almost like glass.

Dennis looked down at me as I pulled alongside. “J.W., what brings you out here? You going sailing?”

“No, I wanted to see you.”

“You want to go conching?”

“No. My mind is weak but it's not that weak. It's about Harold Hobbes.”

He glanced at me curiously while he coiled a line. “What about him, aside from his being dead?” He looked toward shore. “You see Silas? He's supposed to be getting us coffee.”

“I didn't go by the Dock Street.”

“Probably gabbing with somebody there. We should have been under way by now.”

Dennis hadn't bothered shaving that morning. He was a broad-shouldered young guy who could haul a trap better than most, and being a worker he was characteristically anxious to get moving.

“Did you know Harold?” I asked, moving my oars slightly to keep the dinghy steady on the flat water.

He looked back at me. “I knew who he was. Why?”

“Harold was off someplace the night Ollie Mattes got himself killed. He wouldn't tell his mother where. I wondered if you might know.”

His voice changed. “Why should I know?”

“He was somewhere he didn't want to talk about. It occurred to me that he might have been in the closet. If he was, I thought you might know about it.”

Dennis had stopped coiling his line. Now he completed the job. “The island is a small world, but I can't claim to know everybody in it.”

“Did you know Harold?”

He looked toward shore. “There's Silas, finally. Come on, Silas, we're losing half a day!” His eyes came back. “No. Only that he was one of those letters-to-the-editors writers who are always bitching about overdevelopment and golf courses and like that. I doubt if I ever said two words to him.”

“You ever hear about him living the life?”

“No. Doesn't mean he wasn't, though. I don't subscribe to a dating service, y'know.”

I said, “I'm not trying to corner you, Dennis. It's just that two men are dead and I'm trying to find out where Harold was the night Ollie was killed. Somebody knows and I'd like to talk with him.”

He finally let his anger show. “You think we've got one of those gay killers on the loose? Is that it? Well, all I can tell you is that I've never heard any of my crowd mention Harold Hobbes's name except when they read his letters in the papers and said they thought he was another one of those rich guys who never had to work for a living and didn't know shit from sardines.” He turned and shouted toward shore, “Come on, Silas, we're burning daylight!”

“Will you ask around and let me know if you hear anything?”

He took a deep breath. “Sure, J.W., but if there was anything to hear I think I'd have heard it by now.” He turned away and touched a key and the deep growl of the
Lucy
's engine rumbled in my ears.

As I rowed back toward Collins Beach, I watched Silas arrive at the
Lucy,
hand up a thermos of coffee, and climb aboard. As I rounded the Reading Room dock, Dennis and Silas were headed out to sea.

I drove back home and found that a line had formed at the computer. Zee, as senior member of the users, was in front of the monitor screen and seemed to be reading something about Mongolia, while our children anxiously waited their turns. Mongolia? I decided not to ask why. Instead, I went to the phone book and looked up Roger Avila's number. Roger wasn't home. I guessed where he might be and phoned Helga Mattes. No one was there, either.

I looked at my watch, which I'd gotten for a dollar at a yard sale. You should never pay more than $9.99 for a wristwatch, and you can usually get a good one for less. Expensive watches get lost and broken just as often as cheap ones. They don't keep time any better and you worry about them more. All you need is a watch that runs, that's water resistant, and that's fairly shock resistant. Most fit that description. According to mine, a lot of people were at this moment probably in church.

Since I obviously wasn't going to be missed by my family, I went into the bedroom and got my old Boston PD shield out of the box where I keep mostly unused items like cuff links, tiepins, my ancient and long unused Zippo lighter, and a little water pipe left over from my pot-smoking days. I put the shield in my wallet then drove to the cemetery where Ollie Mattes's new grave was still covered with flowers and greens. There were no mourners, so I drove to Helga Mattes's house, which was as devoid of life as was the cemetery. I parked across the street and waited.

After a while two cars came down the street. One pulled into the driveway and the other stopped in front of the house. Helga Mattes and the children I'd seen at the funeral got out of the car in the driveway. A man I remembered seeing at the funeral and grave service got out of the other car. He had stood apart from the widow and her children at the burial and had still been there when I'd left. The smart money said he was John Lupien. He and Helga and the children went into the house.

I was listening to the country-and-western station in Rhode Island. Some new singers whose names I'd mostly not heard before were singing unfamiliar somebody-done-somebody-wrong songs. Their bands were too loud for their voices so I missed a lot of the words, but it was music you could dance to, which I guessed was the point. Personally I preferred to hear the lyrics when I listened to C and W, but that seemed less fashionable now than when Emmylou and Dolly were at the top of the charts. I listened to two more songs and then crossed the street and knocked on the door. Helga Mattes opened it.

I said, “Mrs. Mattes? My name is Jackson. I'd like to offer my condolences to you. I was at the funeral.”

“Oh,” she said. “Thank you. Were you a friend of Ollie's?”

Did Ollie have friends? I said, “Not a close one, but no man is an island and one death diminishes us all.”

“Yes.”

“Yes. John Donne wrote it.” I looked beyond her and saw a man watching me from the far side of the room. I dropped my eyes back down to hers. “I know this probably isn't a good time, but I'd like to talk with you about your husband. I'm one of the people investigating his death.”

Her face seemed to stiffen. “Oh. Well, I've already talked with the police.” She didn't ask me in.

“I know,” I said, “but I'm interviewing people again on the chance that somebody might have remembered something they didn't mention before. Some name, maybe. Somebody who had reason to want to harm your husband.”

“I've told the police everything. There are no other names that I can think of. Ollie didn't have many friends, but I can't think of anyone who would want to kill him. Don't they think he might have been killed by mistake? By someone who went there to burn down that big house or something and who fought with Ollie then panicked and pushed him off of that cliff to make it look like an accident and then ran away?”

“Yes, it could have happened just like that. But maybe it didn't. Maybe somebody wanted him dead. That's what we're trying to find out.”

“But who would want him dead? My husband wasn't easy to like, but I can't imagine anyone wanting that. We don't just kill people because we don't like them.”

Some people do, of course. “Usually people have a reason or think they have,” I said. “Planned killings usually involve money or sex or fear, but the motive can be almost anything. It can be a political assassination or it can be as simple as getting rid of somebody who's inconvenient, or it can be love.”

Her eyes grew wary. “What do you mean?”

I made a small gesture. “It's a commonplace event. A lover kills a husband to get the wife. A wife kills a lover who threatens to tell her husband about their relationship. A husband kills his wife so he can marry his mistress. A mistress kills a wife so she can marry the husband. Whenever there's a killing, spouses and lovers are always prime suspects.” I flicked my eyes at the man behind her, then brought them back down to hers again.

She hesitated, then stepped back and said, “I've told the police everything I know. You'd better go now.”

She began to shut the door, but I put a hand on it. “I'd like to talk with Mr. Lupien before I leave.”

“No. Not now. Please leave.” She pushed on the door but my arm was stronger than hers.

I raised my voice. “Mr. Lupien, I'd like to speak with you for a few minutes.”

He was there instantly. “Take your hand off of that door before I take it off for you!” He was a sturdy man about six feet tall, and his voice was hard and angry.

I said, “You have a temper, Mr. Lupien. You don't seem to be able to control it.”

“You heard what I said. Take your hand away!”

I took my hand away. “You tried to strangle Ollie Mattes not long ago and now I find you here with his wife. I'd like to talk with you about that.”

Helga Mattes put her hand on his arm. “Don't go out there, John. Just shut the door!”

But John came out and shut the door behind him. “Have you no decency? Helga and the children are still in mourning.”

I ignored his outrage. “Where were you when Ollie Mattes was killed?”

The skin on his face seemed stretched to the breaking point. I almost expected it to split and reveal the bone beneath. I'd never seen anything like it. Then, when he heard my question, he suddenly relaxed.

“I can prove I wasn't on Chappaquiddick.”

“Where were you?”

“Right here. Right in this house. Helga can testify to that.” His voice changed tone. “I love Helga. She was getting a divorce, and we're going to get married.”

“If she loves you, she's not a dependable witness. Women in love will swear their men were home in bed even when surveillance cameras and fingerprints and DNA evidence say they were killing somebody across town.”