Murder at a Vineyard Mansion (8 page)

“Can I ask what you're planning to do with this information?”

“Sure. I'm thinking about getting my children a computer and it occurred to me that one of the things I might put on it is a short history of the island's old families. I've read Banks and I've seen some newer material at the Historical Society, but I can't find much about the last generation or two. I'm hoping you can tell me about the Bradfords, since they're Chilmark people. For instance, I had no idea until today that Ollie Mattes was a relative. Too bad about poor Ollie.”

“I didn't know Ollie Mattes,” said Eileen Graves. “I think he lived in Oak Bluffs, so he was out of my sphere. But I can tell you about Miles Bradford and his wife.” She leaned forward and smiled wickedly. “And his other women, too, if that interests you. I love gossip!”

Who doesn't? “Tell me,” I said.

“Miles Bradford was a man who liked his pleasures,” said Eileen Graves, “and he didn't care where he found them. There used to be rumors around town that if sheep had last names, half the lambs in Chilmark would be named Bradford!”

I had to smile. “No.”

“Yes! I think the sheep are an exaggeration, but there's no doubt he liked women and they liked him. I remember him well. He was tall and handsome and rich and randy. I think I have a photo of him in my files. Would you like to see it?”

“Sure.”

She went away and came back with an ancient copy of the
Vineyard Gazette.
I looked at the face in the photo, which was part of an obituary notice. The face seemed familiar, but I knew I'd never met the man. “You won't find it in that obit,” said Eileen, “but he died in bed with a woman who wasn't his wife. Heart attack.” She arched a brow. “I imagine it was just the way he would have wanted to go.”

“The joy that kills,” I said. “How'd that story get out?”

“My husband was a doctor. He was called to the house. In those days there wasn't much going on in town that Jim didn't know about. He kept his mouth shut about most things, but he told me about that. Now it doesn't make any difference because Miles is long gone and so are the woman and the child they produced.”

“There was a child?”

“Miles fathered quite a few, some say. This boy was Ollie Mattes, who just got himself killed down in Edgartown. He was Cheryl Bradford's half brother, as you know.”

“His mother was a Mattes?”

“She was still Alice Hobbes when she and Miles were having their fling. She married Pete Mattes before the boy was born. Pete gave the boy his name and treated him like his own, but when Alice died Ollie changed. He'd been a normal sort of kid, but he got shiftless. When Pete died, he ran Pete's landscaping business into the ground. There's no telling why people change like that, but Ollie did.”

“He married a woman named Helga and they had children. Do you know her maiden name?”

She frowned and shook her head. “Girl didn't come from Chilmark. I can dig up her name but I don't know it offhand.”

“I can find it if I need it. Did Miles's wife take exception to his affairs with other women?”

“It made a hater out of her, but she never made a public issue out of something she couldn't help. It was just that he had to have other women on the side. He was a man who needed more than one woman, just like there are women who need more than one man. I could name a few who are living in town right now, but I won't.”

“Maybe I'll come back when they're dead.”

She returned my smile. “Do that. I'm not inclined to slander the living, but the dead are fair game.”

“I met Cheryl Bradford's mother earlier today. I didn't seem to please her.”

“As I told you, Sarah's pretty sour on men, and after the way Miles acted up, who can blame her? She still lives there on the farm with Cheryl. Sarah is getting along in years and she's sick, but she's still tough as nails and strong as an ox.”

“She looks stronger than she looks sick.”

She nodded. “Brain tumor of some sort, I hear. Inoperable. When it kills her, it'll kill her quick. Until then she doesn't let it slow her down. Those Piersons are a rugged bunch.”

“She was a Pierson?”

“Yes, indeed. The island branch of the family.”

“What's her relation to Ron Pierson who's building that big house on Chappy?”

“Where Ollie Mattes was working when he got himself killed? Let me see now.” She put her hand to her chin. “Ron must be Sarah's first cousin once removed. That would make him Cheryl's second cousin.” She shut her eyes and sketched an invisible genealogy in the air with her forefinger. “Sarah's father's brother was Ron's grandfather. Yes, that's right. Those brothers never got along and Ron's grandfather ended up leaving the island.” Her bright eyes opened again. “Family fights can be pretty brutal, as you may know. As far as I know, the younger generations are still at swords' points.”

Love and hate are never far apart, and the memory of real or imagined slights can be very long. “What was the fight about?” I asked.

“Money, of course. Bill—that's Sarah's father—was the eldest, so he got the family farm that Sarah has now. Ben—that's Ron's grandfather—got the family swordfishing boat, which immediately sank, leaving Ben with nothing but a grudge. He turned a liability into success, though, and ended up richer than Bill by far. He moved to the mainland and got into the radio business—making them, that is. You've heard of Pierson radios, I imagine.”

“No.”

“Before your time, maybe. Anyway, Ben Pierson and Elmo Connell joined up making radios and other electronics, and when the space program was getting off the ground and the government needed communication systems for their rockets, Ben and Elmo created Connell Aerospace and began to get a lot of contracts. Ron Pierson isn't just his grandfather's heir; he's the CEO of the company. He's the richest Pierson of them all, and there are a lot of rich Piersons.”

“And now he's back on the Vineyard building himself a house.”

She nodded. “Yes, and a bigger one than any island Pierson ever owned. He's rubbing his cousins' noses in it, if you ask me.”

“You think that's why he hired Ollie to work for him? To remind people that he's got the money now, and that his island kin have to work for him?”

“Could be. Ollie needed work, for sure, and he probably didn't care who paid him. I don't know Ron Pierson except for what I read in the papers. Maybe he's a prince among men.”

I heard the irony in her voice. “Have you met many princes in your line of work?”

She shook her head and I liked her wry smile when she said, “No, princes are a pretty rare commodity these days. Always have been. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“I'd be glad to have one.”

She rose and went out of the room. While she was gone I thought about what I'd learned. When she returned and we had tasted her tea—Earl Grey, as near as I could tell—I said, “Ethan Bradford worked for Connell Aerospace. But then he left the firm and moved back to the island. I met him earlier today and he was pretty unfriendly. Do you know anything about any of that?”

Her voice was as cool as her tea was warm. “What are you asking?”

I told her what Cheryl had told me about her brother. “I guess what I'm asking is how Ethan happened to go to work for a company owned by a branch of the family that was alienated from his branch. If the cousins were unfriendly, it seems curious that one would go to work for the other.”

She shook her head. “I really don't know. Ollie Mattes went to work for Ron here on the island, remember. Maybe Ron's been making an effort to mend the rift in the family, but then again maybe that had nothing to do with it. Ethan Bradford is an electrical engineer, I know. He had the qualifications to work at Connell Aerospace, and if he applied for work there, maybe some sharp-eared middle-management guy recognized his name and gave him the job, thinking that was what the boss would want him to do. I don't know if Ron even knew he was employed there.”

“Cheryl says Ron Pierson accused Ethan of theft and fired him and that it was personal.”

She shrugged. “That could be the real story.” She sipped her tea and then leaned toward me. “I'll tell you one thing, though. I don't like Ethan living out in the woods like Thoreau or one of those militia people you read about. It's not healthy for him and it's not good for the community.”

“He's not living quite like Thoreau,” I said. “He's got electricity and a telephone there in his shack. He's roughing it in comfort.”

“I worry about what he might do.”

“Do you think he's dangerous?”

“You saw him today. What do you think?”

An angry man with a shotgun is always a danger. “I'm not sure,” I said. “His sister didn't describe him as a militiaman. As I told you, she said he was angry about technology being used for harm rather than for good, and about getting fired from Connell Aerospace. That doesn't sound like your typical antigovernment, rifle-toting hermit.”

She looked at me over the rim of her teacup. “Maybe he's one of those militant pacifists who'll kill you for peace.”

I thought of the radical animal rights people and Earth First! people and antiabortion people, and others of that ilk who were so full of righteousness that they considered it their moral duty to kill you if you acted against them. Passionate moralists have caused more grief in the world than all of its Darth Vaders combined.

“You may be right,” I said. “For a small island we seem to have a lot of oddball citizens. Did the Bradfords always produce their share? Some families do.”

She laughed. “No more than the Jacksons, probably, but you'd know more about that family than I do.”

“We're off-islanders, so we probably don't count,” I said. I liked the way she laughed. She was a handsome woman who would have been a real looker when Miles Bradford had been in action. I wondered if Miles had ever made a pass at Dr. Graves's pretty young wife, but I decided not to ask. Instead, I said, “Aside from Ollie Mattes, did Miles father any other extracurricular offspring around the island?”

She finished her cup and placed it on the coffee table. “I'm not a census taker, but some say there are a lot of up-island people about your age who look something like Miles. His nose or hairline or chin or all of those and more. But Jim only told me about Alice and Ollie, because Miles died in her bed and not in someone else's.”

Doctors, nurses, social workers, cops, and teachers know more about the Vineyard's dark side than most of its citizens and visitors can even guess at. Not all Snopeses live in Yoknapatawpha County and not all Beans live in Egypt, Maine. The island has its share and more. The existence of a profligate wandering sex machine such as Miles Bradford seemed to have been was not a great surprise, and God, if there was a God, would not judge his children on the basis of which side of the sheets they were born on. Neither would I…

I put my cup beside hers and stood. “You've been a big help,” I said. “From now on I'll make it a point to read your column.”

“A new reader! What more could a writer ask?”

I thanked her at the door and she said I was welcome. I asked if I could call on her again if I thought of something she might help me with. She said I could. I got into my truck and drove home. One thing seemed clear: if Sarah Bradford was down on men, she had reason to be, considering the life her husband had led.

Happiness is having chowder in your fridge waiting to be heated. No one else was home so I prepared a large bowlful and feasted by myself, accompanying the hot chowder with a cold Sam Adams, America's finest bottled beer, although Sam may now hear hoofbeats close behind his horse as more and more small breweries enter the race. Whenever I think that America is doomed I remind myself of those eight hundred microbreweries and am reassured that the republic's future will be a glorious one.

When the chowder was gone and the cleaned dishes were in the draining rack I called Quinn at the
Boston Globe.
Quinn's lunch hours were irregular to say the least, but by a fluke he was at his desk. He and I had met years before when I was a rookie cop on the Boston PD and he was a young reporter. We'd hit it off for some reason and were still friends.

“I know what's happened,” he said when he heard my voice. “Zee has finally wised up and left you and is on her way to my side. You want to prepare me for her arrival. You're a good fellow, J.W., in spite of what people say.”

“You live in a rich fantasy world like all reporters,” I said. “Didn't you write a story a few years back about Connell Aerospace? About how a small company making radios grew into a colossus getting contracts from NASA and the Pentagon? About cutting-edge electronics and weaponry and that sort of thing?”

“I did. You may be the only person who remembers it. Why do you ask?”

“You interviewed a number of people working for Connell, as I recall.”

“And a number of their critics, too, as you may also recall.”

“If you're still on speaking terms with any of your sources, I'd like to have you find out a couple of things about an engineer named Ethan Bradford.”

“What kind of things?”

“He got through working there in the last year or two. I'd like to know as much as I can about what happened when he and Connell parted ways.” I told him of my conversations with Cheryl Bradford and Eileen Graves.

“And why do you want to know this stuff, if I may ask before I go off and poke my nose where some people are sure to think it doesn't belong?”

“Because we've just had a couple of murders down here in Paradise and one of the victims was half brother to Ethan Bradford. I'm checking the family link.”

“I read about those killings. And you're operating on the old ‘people are usually murdered by relatives, friends, and acquaintances' theory, eh?”