Off Season (23 page)

“Naturally, I told him that I absolutely wouldn't do it,” I said.

She lay inside my curled arm and was looking at the kitten sleeping in the overstuffed chair off to our right. “Well, I think you should,” she said. “Nash may bungle it, or Mimi might run him off before he can give her the kittens. it's best that you be there.”

“I want to be here with you.”

“You can come right back here as soon as Nash makes his delivery. I'll be waiting.” She snuggled against me. “There. That's settled. So we're going to a concert, eh? That will be nice. I love Christmas.”

The next day there was even less snow. Was my white Christmas going to melt away before the Great Day actually arrived? As I drove out along the West Tisbury road, I hoped that most people were feeling more cheerful than I was, and I had a flashback to
Christmas in Edgartown.

Enterprising owners of Vineyard shops and inns, always eager to extend or add to the island's tourist seasons, offer
Christmas in Edgartown
in hopes of luring prospective visitors down to enjoy what is called “an old-fashioned Christmas.” This idea, stolen more or less whole hog from Nantucket, which had begun a similar holiday practice for similar reasons some years before, is manifest in exhibits of crafts and arts— ornament making, wreath making and tree trimming, among other things—bazaars, holiday movies and songfests, wine tastings, skating parties, a variety of tours, meals ranging from pancake breakfasts to chowder and chili feasts, and other entertainments.

I had stood in the chilly wind long enough to watch the Christmas parade go down Main Street, and then gone up to attend Santa Claus's official arrival at the park. Rudolph had not made an appearance, but a lot of other red noses were there, including mine. These noses and the mouths below them had been puffing solid-looking clouds of steam into the winter air, but their owners' cheerful hats and scarves and happy faces were in sharp contrast to the thin gray sky which lay over us, and the cold gray sea that surrounded us and reached from horizon to horizon. We'd all felt pretty good.

I hoped that everyone was still feeling as jolly, because I now was not. I had some more snooping to do,
and I was not sure I enjoyed the thinking that went with it.

I drove past Mimi Bettencourt's house, which looked quite Christmasish and cozy, then past Chug Lovell's house, which looked sad and abandoned amid its overgrowth of bushes and slushy-looking snow, then came to Vince and Phyllis Manwaring's house, which just looked empty. I drove in and parked behind the house. I opened the rear door of the Land Cruiser and got out the plastic bucket and the piece of coarse screen that I'd brought from home. Then I made a circumnavigation of the house, checking windows and doors as I went. There was no sign that anyone had been there since I had been there days before.

I stamped the snow from my boots on the porch, then got out Mimi's key and went inside. The house had that chilly feel that an empty house can get during the winter, and I turned the thermostat back up to seventy, so Vince and Phyllis would find a warm nest waiting for them when Vince came down for the holiday and Phyllis would join him, no longer needing to be afraid of being home alone.

The living room was as I remembered it. I got some newspaper from the kindling box beside the fireplace hearth, spread it on the floor and dug out a piece of the cardboard I'd previously seen in the ashes. I put the cardboard on my newspaper and dug some more until I came up with more bits of cardboard. Phyllis no doubt had her virtues, but building a decent fire was not among them. I looked at the scraps of cardboard. They were charred and black, but there was no doubt that they looked a great deal like they had once been part of the cover of a photograph album.

I put the screen across the top of my bucket and, using Vince's little fireplace shovel, began to shovel ashes bit by bit onto the screen. When I stirred them with my fingers, the ashes fell through and bits too big to pass through stayed on top. If there was nothing interesting on top, I would tip the screen and let the stuff fall into the bucket. A little cloud of soot was soon floating in the air, but I kept at it. When the bucket was full, I took it outside and emptied it in the woods behind the house. But not everything got thrown out. First I found metal rings such as held pages inside photograph albums, and finally, in a far corner of the fireplace, I found what I was hoping and not hoping to find: a bit of negative and part of a photograph, both partially burned but still identifiable.

The photo was of a nude woman and a partially clothed man engaged in what looked like, for her, a very uncomfortable sort of sex. The fire had taken away the woman's face, but had left the rest of her. It had taken away most of Chug Lovell's legs, but had left his face. He looked intent. It was an amateur shot, and I wondered if the woman even knew it was being taken and where the camera had been.

I turned on a floor lamp and examined the negative. A woman on her knees, looking up, her hands cuffed behind her, a nude man before her, looking down. A photo apparently taken from the camera in the ceiling. His face was not shown; I recognized hers.

I went back to the fireplace and screened the rest of the ashes. I found two more bits of negative with contents similar to that of the first one. There was too little left of the negatives to identify the participants. I put the cardboard, the photo and the negatives in a large envelope, and emptied the last bucket of ashes.
Then I found Phyllis's vacuum cleaner and cleaned up the fireplace and the living room rug. No need for Vince to know how careless Phyllis had been with her fire.

Then while I thought things over, I laid a new fire. Paper, kindling, larger pieces of wood, a birch log. Very cozy-looking. A Yule log for the senator-to-be and his wife. Even Phyllis could make this one burn. All she needed to do was light it.

I went to the phone and called Mimi Bettencourt's house. Mimi answered and I told her to tell Phyllis that I was up at her place, and that I knew Vince was coming down in a couple of days, so I was going to clean the house up a bit.

“Oh, how nice of you,” said Mimi. “I'm sure she'll be very appreciative.”

I doubted that. “It won't take long,” I said. “There's not much to do.”

“Well, it's very good of you. Drop by on your way home and have some tea. Wait, here she is now. You can talk to her yourself.” I heard her call, “Phyllis! it's J.W. For you.”

Phyllis's voice was less strained than it had been when last I'd seen her. She asked how I was and I told her that I was fine and then I told her what I'd told Mimi.

“Oh,” she said. Then, quickly, “Well, don't bother, please. I'll take care of it. I'll come right up. Thank you very much, but . . . Yes, I'm coming up myself. Right away. I do thank you so much! Come down and visit Mimi instead. She'd love to see you. Goodbye.”

The phone clicked and buzzed in my ear, and I sat back to wait, feeling the room slowly grow warmer as the furnace did its work.

I heard the car when it came into the yard, and had but a moment to wait for the sound of the back door
of the house opening. I got up as Phyllis came into the living room. She was wearing an unbuttoned winter coat over slacks and a sweater, and there were short boots on her feet. Her hair, as always, looked newly permed. Her eyes flicked from me to the fireplace and back. She put a hand to her mouth and leaned against the deep chair that formed a part of the set of furniture that curled around the front of the fireplace. Her face was pale. She sank into the chair and put her other hand up to that pale face.

I gestured toward the envelope, which lay on the low table in front of the couch. “You didn't do a very good job with your fire,” I said. “There are pieces of the albums and pictures here. Some negatives, too. Heather is in one. I imagine that's why you did it.”

There was a pause while she looked at the floor. When she spoke, her voice was strange. “I meant to come back, but I just couldn't.” She shuddered. “It was all so hateful. Besides, I thought I had time to clean things up. Mimi never told me she'd given you her key. I never knew until just now.” She waved a well-groomed hand in a vague gesture. “Mimi just told me. She said she didn't want to worry me. Worry me.” She raised her head and looked at me. “I knew then that I'd be too late, but I had to try, I had to hope that you hadn't looked at the fire too carefully. Oh dear, what will happen now . . .?” She put her hands between her knees and shook her head slowly back and forth.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

She shook her head. “I don't think I should say anything more.”

“Did Chug try to blackmail you?”

“I think I should call my husband . . . my lawyer . . .” She seemed uncertain.

“I think you did it because he showed you pictures
of Heather and asked for money. I think you were protecting your daughter.”

She looked up at me, her teeth over her lower lip.

I went on. “I think he asked you to come to his house because he had something important to show you. I think that when you got there, he showed you his albums and told you that if you didn't pay him money, he'd sell them to a magazine and tell the island men all about Heather. Is that about it?”

“No!” Then, “How did you know that . . .?”

“I should have known it was you when you spilled your tea at Mimi's house and called someone a wicked man. We were talking about Chug's murder, and you spilled your tea. Do you know anything about archery? About how to shoot a bow and arrow?”

“No. Certainly not. Sport doesn't interest me.”

“I understand why you want to lie. You've killed someone and you're afraid . . .”

“I'm not lying! I'm not afraid! I haven't killed anyone!”

“You and Mimi went to school together, and you practiced archery together. Mimi has an album with a picture of the two of you as students on the archery range. I haven't seen it, but Manny Fonseca has, and I doubt if Mimi will deny anything if the police ask her about it.” I watched her close her eyes and sink into herself.

“Mimi told me once that you were tougher than you seemed to be,” I said. “What I think happened is this. When Chug threatened to ruin Heather, you went sort of crazy. You grabbed his own bow and arrows, and you shot him. You weren't strong enough to pull that compound bow of his all the way back, but you were strong enough to pull it partway, and it was enough to put the arrow into him. Then you took the
albums and the negatives and you went home and tried to burn them. But you were a wreck and you did a bad job with the fire, then you fell apart and had to go to Mimi's place
So
you wouldn't have to be alone up here.”

As I spoke, she opened her eyes and they grew larger and larger until they seemed to fill her white face. She wiped at them with her hands. “I need a hankie,” she said. “I'm not going to say anything. You're not the police. I know I don't have to say anything.”

“That's right. You don't have to say anything, and I'm not the police. They don't know about you yet, but if they see the stuff in this envelope, and talk to the people I've talked too, you'll be in more trouble than you are now.”

She thought about that. “I need a hankie,” she said again, finally. “There's a box in the bedroom. Do you mind if I get it?”

“This is your house. You can do whatever you want.”

She got up and went into the bedroom. After a while I heard water running in the attached bathroom. When she came out again, her face had been scrubbed clean of makeup. She sat down again, and looked at me. “What do you mean ‘if' they see the things in the envelope? What do you mean by that? And what do you mean when you say I'll be in a lot more trouble than I am now? I'm already in trouble.”

I looked at her. “Not with me,” I said. “Not yet. I'm not the conscience of my race.” I told her how Chug had tried to blackmail other women. “He was not a really nice guy,” I said. “He got some money from Heather and he's gotten it from other women too, for years. But I guess it wasn't enough, so he came to you, because you have a very rich husband. One woman I
talked to hoped that if one of Chug's victims had killed him, she'd get away with it. If I was a cop, it would be my job to make sure she didn't. But I'm not a cop anymore.” I paused. “But I've got to know what happened.”

She gestured toward the envelope. “it's a crime to withhold evidence. You have to give them that.”

I held her eyes. “I haven't decided what to do with that, yet. I want to hear you first.”

“Do you have a cigarette? Oh, never mind. I haven't smoked in ten years.” She took a deep breath. “All right. First, he threatened to destroy Vince's career. You can imagine what that could have led to, if I'd fallen for that line. I would have had to lie and cheat and pay out a fortune for the rest of my life to keep Chug Lovell quiet. But I'll tell you frankly, Mr. Jackson, although my husband is a man who likes power, I don't care for politics, and I'm not sure that he should be in the senate. To tell you the truth, if that wicked little man had only threatened to show those pictures to Vince, I might have told him to get on with it, because Vince will forgive his children anything, and he would have given up his campaign. And then he would have absolutely destroyed Chug Lovell! Does that astonish you?”

“No,” I lied, surprised by yet another woman.

“Vince is a hard man, and I think it best if he remain in the business world, where there are others like him to keep him in check. Did you know that he's actually talking with gangsters in Providence? People who own companies and have influence in the labor unions? But Heather's personal life is another matter. When Chug Lovell threatened to publish those pictures and show them to other men, I . . . I . . . Something snapped inside of me. I could see that
bow of his in the next room. I ran there. I think he tried to stop me, but I got away. There was a quiver of arrows. I snatched up the bow and an arrow. I remember that the other arrows spilled on the floor all around me. We struggled, but I pushed him away. Then he came at me again, and I shot him. I could hardly pull the bow, but it was enough.”