Vineyard Deceit (21 page)

After thinking these provincial thoughts and finishing my lunch, I drove to Katama, found Katama Caterers, and got the recipe for Sarofimian bhajji. It looked pretty good. On the way home I stopped at the A & P and bought the ingredients. I phoned the hospital and left a message for Zee, who was busy helping bandage up another moped victim.

“Come to supper,” I said.

She did.

18

Zee was met with Absolut in a chilled glass. I guided her out to a lawn chair, pulled off her shoes, and put her feet on yet another chair. I put crackers, cheese, and bluefish pate on the table beside her drink.

“This is the way it should be,” she said, leaning back. “Maybe I'll arrange to have you travel around the country giving seminars on how men should greet their women in the evening.”

“An excellent idea. You can travel with me and illustrate how the women can show their appreciation later that night.”

“What are you, a professional man who wants to be paid for all services? All of a sudden I feel a headache coming on.”

“No tit for tat, eh?”

“Is that what you call this welcoming ceremony? A tat?”

I hadn't thought of that pun. “Ha, ha. Just relax. You've had a hard day at the office, but old J.W. knows how to fix you up. I will ply you with booze and food and send you home a new woman, able to face the world with a smile.”

I got my own Absolut and we sat and watched the evening deepen. She told me about her day at the hospital emergency room. Three mopeders had bitten the Vineyard dust, someone had gotten a metal filing in his eye, the police had brought in a drunk who had fallen out of the bunk in his cell and broken his nose. A normal victim list for a Vineyard summer day.

After a while I went in and finished the cooking: chicken baked in an orange sauce, white rice, and Sarofimian bhajji. I went out and invited Zee in.

As she came through the door, her nose twitched. Then she thought and then she sniffed some more. I sat her down at the table and poured white wine. She looked at the bhajji.

“Say, I don't remember having this before. Looks delicious.”

“An old family recipe. Let's dig in.”

We did. Another excellent meal from the kitchen of J. W. Jackson. I am the first to praise my cooking when it works.

“Well,” I said, “what do you think of the veggies?”

“I've never had this dish before, but there's something about it . . .”

“That's familiar?”

“Yes. It's not the vegetables. I've had all of them before. It must be the . . .” She leaned forward and sniffed the bhajji. Her eyes widened. “It's the spices.” She looked at me. “I smelled these spices when they had me tied up!”

I felt happy. “Coriander and cumin. They use a lot of it in Middle Eastern cooking. Indian cooking. Sarofimian cooking.”

“Sarofimian cooking . . . ?”

“Unless you have some other Middle Eastern or Indian types mad at you, I think you got grabbed by some Sarofimians. The Sarofimian Democratic League has my vote.”

“The Sarofimian Democratic League? But why? I wouldn't know the Sarofimian Democratic League if I fell over it. What did they want with me?”

“I don't know yet, but I plan to find out. Are you sure about these spices?”

“Yes. I don't know if I ever smelled this particular dish, but I'm sure it was this combination of spices. But what did I ever do to the Sarofimian Democratic League? The only Sarofimians I've ever seen are that Padishah and his henchman in the boat.” She shivered. “And I have a feeling that if either one of them managed to grab me I wouldn't have gotten off so easily.”

“I think you're right about that, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't them. The only other Sarofimians that are on the island are students, so they're prime suspects. When I find the right ones, I'll find out why.”

“Hey,” said Zee, “easy now.” She put her hand on my arm.

I saw that my hands were fists. I eased them open and willed away a tightness behind my eyes.

“They didn't hurt me,” she said gently. She was dedicated to healing wounds, including her own. She smiled. “I don't need avenging.”

“You're right,” said my voice.

“Let's have coffee.”

“Good idea.” While we drank it, I told her of my conversations with the people I'd met.

“I can't believe Willard Blunt had anything to do with
me being kidnapped,” said Zee, when I was through. “He and Aunt Amelia have been friends for decades. He was a very nice man.”

I'd thought so too. But then Caesar had considered Brutus quite a guy.

“If you spend the night, we can talk about this until morning.”

“You're predictable and sweet,” said Zee, “but I have to go home. You cook a great meal and you make a flawless martini, but I don't want to live with you. Yet.”

Yet. “Yet?”

“At least yet. Are you mad at me?”

“Would it help if I was?”

“No.”

“How about if I'm happy with you?”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it helps, but not enough to keep me from going to my own house.”

“Drat. Phone me when you get home.”

“You don't have to watch over me, Jefferson.”

“Humor me.”

“What if I don't?”

“I'll come up and see how things are myself.”

“I thought so! I'll call you.”

She did. After I hung up I put out the thermos, made sandwiches for two, set the alarm for four, and went to my lonesome bed.

There isn't too much light at four in the morning in August, but by the time I made instant coffee, packed the sandwiches, collected light rods and a tackle box, and got some sand eels out of the freezer, it was getting brighter.

I drove down through sleeping Edgartown to Collins Beach, unchained my dinghy from the seawall, and loaded it in the back of the LandCruiser. Long ago, my father just pulled his dinghy up above the high-water mark and left it, but for years now no unchained dinghy has been
safe, particularly during Regatta week. The gentlemen yachtsmen borrow them after late nights of drinking and go out to their million-dollar boats and then set the dinghies adrift. Now we keep all our dinghies chained up. So it goes.

I dropped the dinghy overboard in Oak Bluffs harbor and at five-thirty was outside Bonzo's door. Bonzo was waiting.

“Hey, J.W., here I am.”

“There are already some guys ahead of us,” I said.

“They won't get 'em all,” he said confidently.

“None of us may get any. Bonito are harder to hook than bluefish and harder to keep, too.”

“But we'll get one, won't we?” Bonzo never doubted that I could catch a fish almost whenever I wanted one. I couldn't bring myself to shatter that simple faith. I decided, as I always did, to let God do it, if it had to be done.

“We'll give it a shot,” I said.

We unloaded the gear into the boat, and I parked the LandCruiser in the parking lot where the
Ocean Queen
loads and unloads its daily hordes of day-trippers from the Cape.

My trusty little Seagull kicked over as always, and we putted out through the channel between the stone jetties into the brightening east.

The sea was flat and dark. We hooked to the right and motored down to the dock where the big ferryboats landed. For reasons known only to bonito, the ferry dock is a good place to hunt them. We pulled around the end of the dock and found a half dozen other boats before us. They had the choice spots right next to the pilings. I found a place a little farther out and dropped anchor.

“Hey,” said Bonzo, looking around. “This is neat.”

It
was
neat. A cool morning promising to warm, flat water, a brightening sky, fish to be caught, and time set aside to catch them. Was there a fish pond in Eden?

We put sinkers on the lines and bobbers above them and sand eels on the hooks and we made our casts. Then we sat and watched the bobbers. Nothing happened.

No matter. The day grew lighter, and suddenly there was the sun, like a giant orange, rising from the sea. There were stringy dark clouds just above the horizon, and the orange ball of sun walked into the sky behind them. We sat and watched the new day being born. The dinghy rose and fell on tiny swells that bent the mirror of water beneath us.

My bobber dipped.

I waited a second and set the hook, then reeled in.

My hook was empty. Some wily fish had stolen my sand eel. I put on another one and cast out again.

In the next hour our bobbers bobbed and our eels were snickered away. The air grew warmer and we slipped out of our jackets. The sun rose above the clouds, and a small breeze ruffled the surface of the water. I felt lazy and good.

Bonzo yelped. His bobber was out of sight. He yanked the tip of his rod into the air. The line started cutting through the water. His reel zinged as the line ran out. I got my line in out of the way.

“Hey!” cried Bonzo. “Lookie, lookie!”

“Get him!” I said.

Other fishermen looked at us. Bnozo's line snaked away, slowed, then hooked back.

“Reel him in. Keep that line tight!”

Bonzo reeled like a madman as the fish raced toward the boat and then, at the last moment, peeled away. Bonzo's reel sang.

The fish turned back and Bonzo reeled. The fish went under our boat, and I tipped the Seagull up so the line wouldn't snag.

“Wow!” yelled Bonzo as the fish tore away from us and the line snaked off the reel once more.

I got the net. The fish was still full of beans, but was
slowing. Bonzo reeled, and the fish flashed alongside the boat, in plain sight now. Then he was gone on another of those wonderful runs, but a slower and shorter run this time. Then he was under the boat again, and as he came up, I netted him and swung him into the dinghy. Bonzo fell over backwards and almost dropped his rod.

“A nice one!” I said, feeling a grin filling up my face. “A damned nice bonito!”

The hook was about one flip of the fins from being torn from his mouth, but it was too late for any escape now. Calls of congratulations came from the other boats.

Bonzo was as happy as a human could be. “Hey, I got one! I got him, J.W.!”

“Yes, you did! You got yourself a really nice fish. This is the only fish anybody's caught today! Hold him up so the other guys can see him.”

Bonzo did, and the other fishermen waved and laughed and made statements about some people having all the luck. Bonzo grinned and waved and finally sat down.

“Now you get one, J.W.,” he said. “Then we'll both have a fish.”

“I don't know,” I said. “You're outfishing me so far. Maybe you got the last one.”

He thought and thought and finally remembered the fishing maxim. He grinned. “If you don't throw, you don't know,” he said.

“You're right.” I made my cast. I felt good.

We fished all morning, but that was the only fish we caught. I thought it was enough. As we putted back into the harbor at eleven, I asked Bonzo if he'd found anybody from Sarofim.

“No. Not one. I tell you what I did, J.W. If anybody talked sort of funny, you know, or maybe looked like they came from someplace else I don't know about, I went right up to them and said ‘I think you're from someplace I don't know about. Are you?' I did just that, and, you know, they weren't mad or anything, ever. There was two
people from a place called Kenya. That's in Africa someplace. There was three from Japan. But there wasn't any from Sarofim.” He looked at me with a happy face. “You know what the funniest people said? They said they lived in a guitar! I laughed. I think that's pretty funny, don't you, J.W.?”

“Pretty funny,” I agreed. He was full of pleasure about his fish.

“They been in there before, sometimes, but I never asked them anything before. But this time I said, ‘You live in a guitar?' And they said yes, and we all laughed. And you know something else, J.W.?”