Off Season (12 page)

It was enough.

“You'd better get yourself a lawyer, too,” I said. “You know the old saying about lawyers being their own lawyers.”

“I know it,” she said. “I'm getting one.”

Whether you're guilty or innocent, some lawyer always gets your money. It's one of the laws of the universe. Could it be that God is a lawyer? What a revoltin' development that would be, as Riley might have said.

She looked at me. “I want to know everything. How will you begin? Where will you start?”

“I'll start with you,” I said.

She stared at me. “What do you mean?”

“I want to know what you'll tell the police if they come to see you.”

Her face got stiff. “Why? You're working for me. I'm not guilty of anything.”

“You're a logical suspect,” I said. “You said it your.”

“But you know I'm not guilty!” The expression on Heather's face could have been anger or fear. Or both.

“I know you told me you're not. Look, if you want me to do this job, you have to work with me, not against me,” I said.

“You're the one who's working against
me
!”

“No. I saw you with Chug Lovell, remember. The two of you weren't just meeting by chance. Killings are often committed by people who are close to one another. Any cop can tell you that. If I was a real cop, and I knew you and Chug had the hots for one another, you'd be one of the first people I'd question.”

“But no one knew about us!”

Her blush indicated that that was an unsurprising lie. I never knew a woman who could actually keep a secret about an affair. Sooner or later, she had to tell someone. I wondered who had heard Heather's story.

“Heather, this is a little island. It's twenty miles long and seven miles wide at the most. It's only got about ten thousand people on it this time of year. It's a small town. Do you really think that nobody knew about you and Chug? And remember, you've hired me because you think that the police
will
find out.”

She reddened, but still held on to her lie. “Who . . .?”

“Well, there's me, for one. And there's whoever you confide in, for two. And there are probably your confidant's confidants and their confidants and their friends. You get the picture.”

She was now recognizably angry and frightened. “But I didn't do it! I couldn't have hurt Chug! You have to believe that.”

I didn't have to believe anything. “Where were you when Chug was killed?”

“I don't know. I don't know when he was killed.”

I wondered if she'd thought of that answer when imagining what questions the police would ask her. It was true that information hadn't been made public,
but it irked me that she was choosing to play games with me. I put my irritation aside. Frightened people often do irrational things. On the other hand, maybe she was just trying to be precise in her answers.

“They found him Wednesday morning. You can start by telling me where you were on Tuesday and Tuesday night.”

“I was in my office on Tuesday. My secretary can verify that.”

“And Tuesday night.”

She drank from her glass, and I wondered if she was going to be clever again. “I was at home. Alone.”

“Can anyone verify that?”

“No. I told you, I was alone. I don't like this.”

“Did you talk to a neighbor? Did you get any telephone calls or make any?”

“No. I was tired. I went to bed early and I read.”

“Did you watch any television?”

“What if I did? What's that got to do with anything?”

“Maybe you could prove you were watching TV when Chug was killed.”

“Well, I didn't watch television, I read.”

“How long does it take you to get from your office to your house?”

“I never thought about it. Ten minutes, maybe?”

Heather's office was on Circuit Avenue in Oak Bluffs. I thought she lived over on East Chop someplace, but I wasn't sure. Five or ten minutes seemed about right.

“Did you see anybody you knew on the road?”

“I don't remember seeing anyone.”

“When did you leave the office?”

“A little after five.”

“And your secretary can verify that?”

“No. She left at five. I worked a while longer.”

“Do you know how to use a bow and arrow?”

She paled and stared at me. “No! What an awful thing to ask!”

“You never took archery lessons at the Y, or in gym class?”

“No!”

“When I was a kid, I made slingshots out of leather boot laces and old shoe tongues, and bows out of yews and arrows out of willows. You never did anything like that?”

“No.”

“I'm almost done. Do you know anyone who had a grudge against Chug?”

“No . . . Well, my mother never approved of him, but . . . But, that was just because he wasn't . . . her sort, her class. He wasn't like the people she and Daddy know, and he was never on her side when it came to the animal rights issue. She didn't like the way he smiled at those meetings. She said he was dirty and that he smirked. Daddy wouldn't have liked him, either, for the same reason. Neither of them would have wanted me to be his . . . lover, but neither of them knew about it! And even if they knew, neither of them could have killed him!”

That was probably true. Parents rarely killed the young men their grown daughters dated. It did happen occasionally, of course.

“Can you think of anyone else? Did he ever mention anyone he was afraid of? Somebody associated with him in his business? Somebody off island, maybe? Anybody he was worried about?”

“No. He didn't talk much about his private life. I know that lately he's had to go off island on business every now and then, but he never talked about it.
Something to do with his inheritance, I always thought.”

I didn't think so. “He never mentioned anyone he disliked?”

“Chug liked everybody.” Tears appeared in her eyes, and she dabbed at them with a tissue. “No one could have hated him enough to do this awful thing.”

That was possibly true. I still didn't know whether Chug's death had been a murder or an accidental shooting or maybe even some other sort of accident. Rifle hunters killed themselves, each other and innocent parties with a certain regularity. I remembered my father joking about whether he should wear red or buckskin during hunting season, since red made him a better target. Children accidentally killed their friends and family members with guns they found where Dad thought they were safe, and I imagined the same sort of accidental shootings might involve bow and arrow people. Maybe some friend of Chug's was just playing around with the bow, and the thing went off . . .

I had one more question. I wasn't sure she was up to answering it, but I didn't see how it could hurt to ask. Besides, the police might ask it sooner or later.

“Did you know that Chug was seeing Helene Norton over on the Cape?”

She lifted her teary face. “What? What are you saying? Helene has a boyfriend. They're probably going to get married!”

“I hear that Helene was thinking of switching men, and that Chug had the inside track. Do you know anything about that?”

“No! That's a lie! What dirty-mouthed person told you that?”

The fury on her face caused a little light to flash in my brain. I thought I now knew who her confidant was. It was Helene Norton. Helene had been told all about Heather and Chug, but Heather had been told nothing of Chug and Helene. I raised a hand, wondering if I thought that gesture would ward off her rage.

“it's just a bit of gossip,” I said.

“it's a nasty, mean lie!”

“But the police may hear about it, and they'll ask you about it if they find out about you and Chug, because it gives you a motive for murder. Hell hath no fury, and all that.”

Her eyes blazed. “I'd like to murder the wicked witch who's spreading that story! That's who I'd like to murder! I swear to God, half the people on this island have nothing better to do with themselves in the wintertime than to tell lies! Where did you hear that awful story?”

“I won't tell you that. It was just another story on the grapevine. I don't want you to go punch out the tale bearer. You've got enough troubles as it is. Who's your lawyer?”

“Percy Goodman.”

Of the island's ten-thousand year-round residents, nine-thousand are lawyers, it seems. The other thousand keep them all busy with suits and countersuits over anything and everything. You can't do anything on Martha's Vineyard without having somebody sue you or threaten to. Try to build a house, and someone will sue you. Try to take a house down, and somebody else will sue. Do this or that, and be sued. Don't do this or that, and be sued again. It's a game played all year round, and Percy Goodman was one of the players. I had probably seen him on the courthouse steps, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, or, on weekends,
standing in front of Midway Market, drinking coffee out of a Styrofoam cup and wearing a golfing cap while waiting for his foursome to show up, but I didn't know who he was.

“You go see him and tell him everything. Tell him I'll be in touch with him if I learn anything. Meanwhile, don't worry too much about not having a good alibi for Tuesday night. Most of us can't prove we were any particular place at specific times. Of course, if you happen to remember anything that will prove you were somewhere else when Chug died, whenever they decide that was, let your lawyer and me know about it.”

She was still angry. “Why should I let you know about it? You don't trust me anyway!” Betrayed by Helene, she now saw deceivers everywhere.

I said, “Maybe that's a good reason to tell me. So I won't waste my time and your money trying to find out where you were when Chug bought it.”

She looked down at the money on the coffee table.

“You can still pick that up and hire yourself a real private eye,” I said. “Maybe you should do that.”

She emptied her drink down her throat and put the glass beside the money. She seemed to pull herself together. I could almost see it happening physically. “No. You're the one. I just hope you're as tough with other people as you've been with me.”

I followed her out to her car.

“I want to know everything you find out,” she said, repeating what she'd said earlier.

“Go see Goodman. Do what he says.”

I watched her drive away. People don't really want to know everything. They think they do, but they don't. Only a god could stand knowing everything that people do to themselves and to one another.

I went back inside, rinsed out Heather's glass and
put it in the drainer beside the sink, and put the money in a bureau drawer where it would keep until Monday when I could put it in the bank.

I put some wood in the stove and got out silverware, plates and bowls for supper. Midwinter darkness was beginning to settle over the house. Out to the east, beyond the mostly brown and viny remains of my garden, I saw fishing boats moving toward harbor across the cold, dark waters of the Sound. Above them the sky was gray and chill. I flicked on the lights and was glad once again that I didn't live in the good old days before electricity and internal combustion engines. No king or prince of yore had ever lived or traveled as comfortably as I did. None of them had had as beautiful a woman as Zee Madieras coming to supper, either.

I thought of Chug Lovell's reputation of living a return-to-nature lifestyle, and of his admission that he actually used electricity and his car like everybody else. Chug, like most of us, was not what he appeared to be. I wondered if that had anything to do with his death.

I rinsed a martini glass with vermouth and thriftily poured the unused vermouth back into its bottle. From the freezer I took the bottle of Tanqueray vodka and filled the glass. Then I returned the bottle to the freezer and set the glass beside it. I would add two black olives when Zee appeared.

She arrived bearing the promised cheese and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon. I exchanged these for the perfect martini, and placed Zee before the fire while I busied myself in the kitchen. When the cheese was grated and the soup warming nicely, I came back and sat beside her, a Sam Adams in hand. She had made quite a hole in the brie and smoked bluefish hors d'oeuvres.

I helped her finish them off and told her about my new job.

“You always did have a long nose,” she said. “And speaking of noses, mine is twitching. Isn't that soup about ready?”

I filled bowls from the pot on the stove, and sprinkled cheese over the contents of each bowl. I cut thick slices of bread and poured glasses of wine, and we sat down to eat. There wasn't much talking for a while. When Zee and I sit down to eat, we sit down to
eat.
After a while I filled our bowls again and we ate some more. At last we pushed our chairs back.

“Viva Portugal, said Zee, smothering a ladylike burp with her napkin. “I tell you, Jefferson, life could be worse. Being married to you is not going to be all that bad.”

Fine words. I cleared away the dishes and we took coffee, brandy and some Pepperidge Farm mint cookies back into the living room.

Beyond the dark windows we could hear a winter wind moving through the trees, blowing brown oak leaves along the ground.

“Do you know anything about bows and arrows?” I asked.

“I've seen both Kevin Costner and Errol Flynn as Robin Hood. Does that count? Kevin is more my kind of guy.”

“When I was a kid, I used to make bows and arrows and shoot the arrows into bales of hay in a neighbor's barn, but since then I haven't pulled a string, or whatever it is that you call it when you shoot a bow.”

“Go see Manny Fonseca,” said Zee. “He's a mighty Nimrod. He'll probably be able to tell you anything you need to know.”