Vineyard Enigma (14 page)

The next morning I left Zee and the children at home and drove to Vineyard Haven, where I knew a guy who worked for the Steamship Authority. He owed me a favor and got a kick out of snooping and telling tales, a nice combination as long as you never told him anything you didn’t want made public knowledge.

“Jim,” I said, “I’d like to know how often the Periera Food Service truck goes back and forth to the mainland.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“So I can free you from the favor you owe me and lift that burden from your soul.”

“I mean really.”

“So do I.”

He sighed and turned to his computer. After a lot of that keyboard tapping that computer people do, some muttering, and a few crude words, he turned to me.

“Steady as clockwork,” he said. “He takes the seven
A.M.
boat over and comes back on the eight-fifteen
P.M.
on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays during the summer and on Wednesdays during the winter. Done that for three years and has reservations for the next six months. I guess he does a good business for three months and less for the other nine, like everybody else on this island. And why not? Who wants to pay Vineyard prices?”

Not me, for sure. “Thanks,” I said. “We’re all even, Jim. You can sleep with an innocent heart.”

“You’re a trip, J.W. You know, if you’d just break down and get yourself a computer of your own, you could probably save your friends a lot of work.”

“No computers for me,” I said. “I have problems with any gadgets more complicated than a straight-blade knife.”

“I suppose I’ll be wasting my time reminding you that this is the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth.”

I went out without answering.

The last time I’d seen Miguel Periera had been on Thursday at Georgie Hall’s house. She’d given him a shopping list that apparently he’d planned to fill when he went to America the next day.

I drove to Oak Bluffs and stopped at the state police office on Temahigan Avenue. Years before, the building had been painted an odd shade of blue, but more aesthetically sensitive builders had lately prevailed, and now the place was cedar-shingled and much more acceptable by Vineyard standards. I went inside and found Sergeant Dom Agganis, wearing civvies, at his desk.

“No Sabbath crisis, please,” said big Dom, raising his hands in horror. “I plan to watch the Sox this afternoon.”

“The Red Sox playing on Sunday is the essence of a Sabbath crisis,” I said, “but I won’t get between you and your masochistic yearnings. What I’d like to know is when Matthew Duarte died.”

“None of your business,” said Dom, not unexpectedly.

“The ME must have come to some conclusion by now,” I said. “It’s been five days. I can guess that the autopsy will say that Duarte was offed by a person or persons unknown who used a gun to blow a hole in the back of his head. I’ll leave the medical details to those who know what they mean, but I’d like to know when it happened. I can find out the hard way if I have to, but you can save me some time and effort.”

“Why should I? You’re sticking your nose in another criminal investigation where you don’t belong. Go home and play with your kids.” Dom was having fun.

“I don’t care about your criminal investigation,” I lied. “I’m just trying to track down some missing merchandise that may have passed through Duarte’s hands. It would help me to know when Duarte got croaked.”

“Oh, yeah? How would it help?”

“People move around. His wife was supposedly over on Nantucket when it happened, for instance, but if I don’t know when Duarte got hit I can’t be sure that she really wasn’t there when the gun went off. Like that.”

“What’s that got to do with your missing merchandise?” He glanced at a sheet of paper on the desk. “By which I presume you mean those soapstone birds your friend Mahsimba told me about.”

“I haven’t known Mahsimba long enough to know whether he’s a friend, but, yeah, those birds. There may be a link between Duarte’s death and the birds, and I may be getting close to it.”

Dom looked a little less bored. “Oh? What makes you think so?”

“Because somebody took a shot at me.”

He immediately became serious. “Tell me.”

I did, then handed him the slug. “This is the bee that tried to sting me.”

He looked at it, then put it in a small plastic bag and placed the bag in a drawer of his desk. “And you figure it’s because somebody doesn’t like you nosing around. What do you know that makes you dangerous?”

I shook my head. “Nothing you probably don’t know. Daniel Duarte, Matthew’s father, was involved with the sale of the birds. Last year sometime a guy named Brownington interviewed him, trying to trace the sale. Supposedly Duarte wouldn’t name the buyer, but Brownington learned that Matthew may have been the sales agent. A little later the old man was killed in a car crash and Brownington disappeared.”

“Automobile accidents happen all the time.”

“Brownington was working for an outfit that’s suspected of trafficking in stolen artifacts. They think the birds belong to them, and hired Brownington to get them back. Brownington used to work for Interpol and knows the way to play rough games. Maybe Duarte
père
died accidentally, but if he didn’t it might not be a surprise if there’s also a link between his death and Matthew’s and the sale of the birds.”

“And you’ve been rounding up the usual suspects, or something like that.”

“I’d like to know who didn’t do it.”

“And I’d like to know what you know or think you know.”

I spread my hands. “I’m an open book. Ask and it shall be revealed to you.”

“Stay here.” He went out of the office and down the hall and came back with two cups of coffee. “Now, start at the beginning and we’ll go over the whole thing again.”

So I did that, giving him most of the facts and some of my conjectures. I told him about Joe Begay’s help, but I didn’t mention my excursion into Duarte’s barn or what I saw and thought there. He listened and occasionally asked a question. When I was through, our cups were empty.

Agganis thought for a while, then said, “I hope your delicate feelings won’t be hurt if I tell you that Mahsimba already told me most of this.”

“That was smart, I think. Anyway, now that I’ve shown you my soul, you can tell me when Matthew Duarte was shot.”

“You’re going to have to introduce me to your pal Begay. He sounds like a useful guy to know.”

“I’ll invite you the next time Joe and I have high tea. Are you going to tell me or not?”

“Don’t get in a snit, but do go home and stay out of this business. I don’t want the next homicide to be yours.”

“I’m not in a snit. If you don’t tell me, I’ll just go home and call my pal Quinn, up at the
Globe,
in Boston. He’ll get his hands on the ME’s report and tell me what I want to know and I’ll tell him there’s a good story down here about the police not solving yet another murder on the Vineyard. He likes stories about incompetent cops on islands oozing with money.”

“One of those ‘Killer Stalks Homes and Byways of Xanadu While Police Flounder’ stories, I imagine. The fact that we’re not floundering won’t make any difference, of course.”

“Of course not. The chamber of commerce will have a tizzy, and Quinn will be in reporter’s heaven.”

He glanced at his watch. “You want to watch the game with me?”

“No. I’ve got problems enough without watching the Sox kick the ball around.” I got up. “See you later.”

“Stay in touch.”

“Sure.”

“By the way, Duarte got himself shot early Tuesday morning. Six
A.M.
or so. That’s about seven or eight hours before you found him. Nobody we’ve talked to, including the neighbors, saw anything or heard anything, but we’re still asking questions. Maybe somebody driving by saw a car going in or coming out. We’re putting a notice in the local papers asking for any help we can get. We may learn something.”

It’s not easy to get away with murder, but if you’re just a little lucky and don’t feel proud or guilty, you can sometimes manage it.

“While you’re feeling talkative, have you had any luck IDing the Horseman?”

“I hear that there are Brownington family blood samples in Boston. DNA may do the job, but I don’t have any results yet. Brownington was a very smart, very tough guy, according to Mahsimba. How would a guy like that manage to get himself killed so fast here on our little island?”

“Even smart, tough guys get killed,” I said.

“You got any suspects in mind for that job?”

“Somebody smarter and tougher.”

“Get out of here. And be careful.”

I got.

It was another lovely day, and I was in a shellfishing mood, so I went home and put a couple of quahog rakes on the roof rack beside the fishing rods (because you never go to the beach without your rods, even if you don’t plan to fish) and stuck rubber gloves and clam baskets in the back of the truck.

Inside the house I invited anyone who wanted to go to join me on the flats, with the option of sitting on the beach while I hunted clams. I got three volunteers and a suggestion that didn’t surprise me.

“Maybe John and Mattie and Mahsimba would like to join us,” said Zee. “Where are we going?”

“I had the far corner of Katama Bay in mind,” I said. “The tide should be about right. Give Mattie a call and have them meet us there. We won’t be hard to find.”

There was a scramble for bathing suits and beach gear while Zee made her telephone call, then the fast preparation of a lunch basket, and we were off, rattling to the island’s south shore. There we headed east behind parked Jeeps whose owners were enjoying one of their last Sundays on Norton’s Point Beach, before the environmentalists closed it down for the summer.

At the Chappy end of Katama Bay there are sand flats that reach out into the bay and provide homes to both soft-shell clams and quahogs. When the tide is right, the place is covered with diggers and rakers. Today the tide was right and we were not the first ones there. Still, there were clams enough for all, so as Zee and the kids unpacked the truck and laid out the beach gear, I took my favorite basket and rake and walked out to the warm, shallow waters of the quahog grounds.

As I walked I wasn’t thinking of shellfish.

With the warm June sun beating down on my naked back, and the placid water lapping comfortably against my thighs, I raked in circles, moving slowly from place to place, seeking quahog city, where the innocent clams would be waiting, unaware of the brevity of their futures. As, no doubt, Matthew Duarte had been unaware almost a week earlier at 6
A.M.

To the north, this side of the narrows, and to the west, along the shore of Katama Point, boats were anchored. Out beyond the flats, where the water was deep enough for a keel or centerboard, a pair of small sloops sailed slowly through the gentle southwest wind.

Between me and the shore where I’d left Zee and the kids, people were on the flats digging holes and enjoying the sun on their backs. There were little children side by side with their elders, for there was no water deep enough to be a danger to them. As I looked back that way, I saw that John Skye’s Jeep had arrived.

I moved farther out, raking lazy circles and picking up a stray quahog here and there before going on and raking yet another circle. I was in no hurry, so the hunting was as good as the finding.

When next I looked back I saw Zee leading Mahsimba out onto the flats to teach him how to dig for steamers. I didn’t know if people went clamming in Zimbabwe, but it was a skill that Mahsimba might one day find valuable if, say, he was ever cast away on a desert island surrounded by clams. Or if he lived on Martha’s Vineyard.

I put my imaginings about Mahsimba aside and continued thinking about what I’d observed and heard over the past week.

Miguel Periera had, it seemed, outgrown his youthful inclinations to live the rowdy life, and was settled into being a family man with a profitable career of catering to the gastronomical whims of the island’s wealthy citizens. He was apparently a classic example of what crime statistics clearly illustrated: that many a young hooligan finally grows up and abandons his or her wild ways. A city swept by crime slowly becomes more sedate as a generation of outlaw youth matures, and only becomes violent again when the next generation of hoodlums-to-be reaches its teens and takes to the life of turmoil and danger until its survivors grow older in their turn and the cycle is repeated.

Of course, not all young criminals abandon the life. Some go on to become middle-aged or even old thieves and killers. I’d read more than once of men in their eighties still robbing banks or murdering their enemies.

Rose Abrams, on the other hand, had never been a wild island girl, but rather a more or less conventional local woman who, though unmarried to Miguel, constituted the family he now enjoyed. She worked part-time for Charles Mauch and had done the same for Matthew Duarte, and had apparently made herself into a valuable and sophisticated assistant for each of them, even to the point of being accepted into the parlors of the wealthiest members of the island’s artistic community. Not bad progress for a Vineyard girl with no money and a limited artistic education.

I thought of her collapse at the news of Matthew Duarte’s death and of Charles Mauch’s cool response to the same news. Mauch interested me. He was rich, highly educated, aesthetically sensitive, well traveled, and of almost legendary stature as a scholar. Gerald Jenkins had less money and less international stature but was otherwise much the same sort of person. Except that he carried a pistol.

How many other pistol packers were there among the aesthetically elite? Had one of them put the bullets into Matthew Duarte’s brain and the Headless Horseman’s heart?

I thought about Georgie Hall and wondered if she had cause to wax Matthew. She didn’t seem the type, but maybe her husband was. You usually don’t make the big bucks and keep them by being a wimp. Brent Hall hadn’t gotten to the top of the ladder without being willing to step on at least a few fingers or faces. Had Brent found Georgie and Matthew in a relationship closer than art dealer and client, and decided to end it the old-fashioned way? Where had Brent been when Matthew had bought it? Did that make any difference, since Brent was rich enough to hire someone else to do his dirty work?

Maybe, because for most amateurs and even for most professional criminals, it’s not easy to find a hired killer when you need one. You have to ask people to identify one for you, and hope they won’t tell anyone else that you inquired, and you have to keep asking until you finally find somebody who claims to actually know such a killer, then you have to meet the supposed killer and make the financial arrangements, then you have to hope that everything goes right and that nobody will brag or get drunk and talk to the wrong listener, and that your supposed killer for hire isn’t really a cop wearing a wire, etc., etc.

It might be easier and safer just to do the job yourself.

That would probably be as true for Brent Hall as for anyone else.

I considered Sam Hopewell. Did he and Matt have a falling-out over some business matter or over Matthew’s impending divorce from Connie? Or was it possible that Sam was going to benefit from Matthew’s death? Matthew’s widow would probably inherit her husband’s business, and what if Sam and Connie were hot and heavy and planned to hitch their wagons to a common star after a respectable period of grieving for the deceased?

I realized that I had hooked Matthew up to almost every woman I’d met in the past week except to his own wife. Extramarital relationships were much on my mind.

The classic motives for violent crime are sex, money, power, and fear, usually in some mixture. I doubted if Matthew’s death was anything more esoteric.

I looked behind me. There, a hundred yards away, Zee and Mahsimba were side by side on their knees, digging for clams. I thought I could see laughter on their faces. They looked like Adam and Eve. Joshua and Diana were digging small holes near them. You’re never too young to learn how to clam.

I felt my rake strike what was surely a quahog and pressed my fingers down on the handle to get the teeth under the clam as I pulled the rake toward me. As I pulled, I felt another hit, then another. Clam city at last. When I brought the rake up, there were four littlenecks in it. I rinsed off the mud and sand and dropped them into my basket.

I raked a new circle and brought up various sized quahogs on almost every pull: littlenecks, cherry-stones, and growlers for chowder. I raked the circle clean and walked out farther. Another circle full of clams. I felt the sun grow hotter on my shoulders as I filled my basket. When it was well rounded, I walked back toward shore, passing happy diggers and coming finally to my family and Mahsimba.

The kids came running.

“Wow, Pa. You got a lot of quahogs!”

“Enough for today. How are you guys doing?”

“We got some steamers. Come and see!”

I went and saw. There were a dozen steamers in the kids’ basket and a lot more in the one beside Zee and Mahsimba, who sat back on their heels as I came up. Their legs and gloved hands were muddy. They looked happy.

“What do you think?” asked Zee. “Do we have enough for a clambake? I’ve been telling Mahsimba about classic New England clambakes and that we should have one before he has to go home.”

I looked at Mahsimba. “Do you have to go home?”

He nodded. “When my work here is done, I may go to California before returning to my country, but certainly I will be going.”

“How do you like clamming?”

He glanced at his muddy rubber gloves, then at Zee, and then looked up at me. “I’ve had a good instructor. It is always interesting to learn what people will eat.”

“There’s a lot of speculation about the first person who ever ate an oyster,” I said, “and I once read about warriors in Mongolia who lived by opening veins in the necks of their horses and drinking the warm blood. Not enough to harm the horses, but enough to sustain the riders.”

“Perhaps if you visit Zimbabwe I can show Zee and you how to find and prepare some of the insects and rodents that my people believe are fine foods indeed.”

“I’d love to see Africa,” said Zee.

“It is the most varied and beautiful continent on earth,” said Mahsimba. “Only a fool would not love Africa.”

“Before eating these clams,” I said, “we’ll put them in a bucket of salt water overnight so they can spit out the sand in their systems. By tomorrow night they’ll be ready. Come to a clambake at our house and you can take the memory home with you. I’ll invite John and Mattie and the twins, too. Between your steamers and my quahogs, we’ll have plenty to eat.”

His golden eyes left mine and joined Zee’s. “If it is not an imposition, I would be pleased to accept.”

“It’s not an imposition,” I said before Zee could reply, and I walked on toward the beach, where John and Mattie were stretched out absorbing the beneficial rays of the sun.

“Nice catch,” said Mattie, opening an eye and closing it again.

“You two and the girls are invited to a Jackson clambake tomorrow night,” I said.

“We accept,” said John. “I’ll do the dishes afterward.”

“We’ll be using paper plates.”

“That’s why I volunteered.”

“That’s what I thought.”

I put the rake on the roof rack, the clam basket in the shade of the car, and stretched out on the old bedspread that served us as a beach blanket.

I adjusted a rolled towel under my head for a pillow, tipped the bill of my cap over my eyes, and let the sun improve my early-summer belly tan while it burned the poisons from my psyche. In time it sealed the bottle holding the genie of jealousy and I was able to think about Periera Food Service.