Vineyard Enigma (3 page)

The West Tisbury police station, which sits beside the village millpond, is one of the smallest on the island, with barely room for three cars to park in front of it. Maybe this is because West Tisbury has lots less crime than towns with bigger stations. Or maybe not. In any case, the chief in this tiny station is as able as any of the other island police chiefs, of whom there are many, since the Vineyard sports at least ten different police forces.

Just why an island with only fourteen thousand permanent residents needs ten police forces is a mystery to everyone who doesn’t live there, and to many who do. Put it down to the same village rivalries that allowed the building of the regional high school only after years of intense argument and invective, some of which continues decades later. There is no more chance of regionalizing the police departments than there is of regionalizing any of the other schools or having a single Vineyard fire department.

In the living room of Matthew Duarte’s house, Kate McMillan, chief of the WTPD, studied the body on the floor while waiting for Dom Agganis of the state police to arrive and take over the investigation. If Kate was angry about the law that took murder investigations out of the hands of local cops and gave them to the state guys, she never showed it.

“It’s Matt Duarte, all right. Hasn’t been dead too long, I’d say.” Having ascertained that the corpse was indeed lifeless, she now stepped back, put her strong hands on her strong hips, and studied the room.

John, Mahsimba, and I stood on the porch and looked through the door, taking advantage of the prestige that came with being the discoverers of the body.

“Is that really a bullet hole in the back of his head?” I asked.

“The medical examiner will give us the official info on that,” said Kate, “but it sure looks like one to me. No gun in sight, either, so if he committed suicide, I’m damned if I can figure out how he managed it. No, boys, I think we can safely say we’ve got a possible murder on our hands.”

“First the Headless Horseman and now this,” I said. “Two murders in a single year is a higher average than usual for Martha’s Vineyard.”

“Too high,” said Kate. She looked at the nervous young summer cop who had arrived with her. “Make sure nobody comes inside until Dom Agganis gets here. I’m going to take a look around.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the young cop. He crossed his arms and stood in the door.

Kate moved down a hall, careful not to touch anything, aware of what any detective can tell you: that the police, particularly high officials such as commanders and commissioners who are eager to be seen, corrupt more crime scenes than any other people do.

It was a big house, so Kate might be gone awhile. I touched Mahsimba’s shoulder and he followed me down the porch. “When did you e-mail this guy and tell him you were coming?” I asked.

“Two days ago, when I was in London. I had just made my plane reservations, so I knew when I’d be here.”

“I believe in coincidences,” I said, “but I’m not sure this is one of them. It’s possible that Mr. Duarte there told somebody about your message and that somebody didn’t want him talking to you.”

Mahsimba didn’t look the least astonished. “First Brownington and now Duarte himself, eh? If your theory is correct, I would very much like to know to whom he spoke.”

I looked in the window through which I’d first seen Matthew Duarte’s body. The corpse was right where it had been before. I looked around the room, but nothing caught my eye other than one of those wooden animal carvings that people bring home from Africa. This one was on the fireplace mantel and was a very nice carving of a lion feeding on a dead antelope.

“What do you make of that?” I asked Mahsimba, pointing.

He studied the piece. “It looks like Shona craftsmanship, but I can’t be sure. The piece is exceptionally fine.”

“It’s a link between Matthew Duarte and Africa, at least.”

“Yes. And it speaks well of his taste.”

From the northeast came the sound of a siren, and not much later a caravan composed of two state patrol cars and one sheriff’s-department car came into the yard. Sergeant Dom Agganis and Officer Olive Otero, followed by Sheriff Peter Blankenship, came up onto the porch.

Olive Otero was carrying a camera. She gave me an irritated look. “You. I should have known you’d be here. Whenever there’s trouble, you’re in the middle of it.”

“Ah, ah,” I said, “let’s have no verbal abuse from the police, Olive. Like always, I’m innocent as a lamb.”

“Can it, you two,” said Dom, who had long since grown tired of Olive and me sparring whenever we met. Olive and I had rubbed each other wrong from the start and had never gotten over it. It had been mutual dislike at first sight, the flip side of love. “Go in and take some pictures, Olive.”

Olive glared at me and went into the house.

“You three found the body, I hear,” said Agganis. “I’ll want to talk with you, so stick around.” He followed Olive inside.

“You and Olive,” said Pete Blankenship, shaking his head. “What a pair.” He went into the house.

I left John and Mahsimba on the porch and walked back to the barn.

“Hey,” said the young cop, “I don’t think you should go down there.”

I pretended not to hear him, and looked first at the car and then rattled the office door. It was locked. I walked around to the side of the barn, where there was an office window. I peeked in but didn’t see any soapstone eagles or any messages scrawled in blood saying the butler did it.

I went on around the barn and noted that its other windows were boarded up. There were double doors in the back of the barn but they, like the front double doors, were also locked. Security was tight at the Duarte and Son offices.

I walked around the house but saw no evidence that anyone had broken through any windows or the kitchen door. It occurred to me that Mahsimba might be able to read signs that I missed, but I had enough confidence in my own eyes to be fairly sure that whoever had killed Matthew Duarte had come into the house by the front door.

Having seen no indications of struggle in the living room, I was also pretty sure that Duarte had known his killer and had let him or her in. It also seemed that he had trusted the killer enough to turn away and get a bullet in the back of his head. Hadn’t something similar happened to Jesse James?

I went back up onto the porch. The young cop looked uncomfortable and annoyed. I’d felt the same way fairly often when I’d been a young cop, so I said, “I didn’t touch anything but the office doorknob,” and he looked slightly relieved.

The police were inside the house for quite a while before Agganis finally came out. He nodded toward his cruiser and we followed him there. I could feel the eyes of the young cop on our backs as he wished he could hear our conversation.

Agganis got a tape recorder out of the car. “You mind if I use this? If you do, say so and I’ll chuck it.”

“You want to give us the Miranda first?” I asked.

“No, I don’t want to give you the damned Miranda, but I will if you want it. Do you?”

“What is this Miranda?” asked Mahsimba.

We explained. “It’s an official warning that if we don’t want to say anything, we don’t have to until we get ourselves some lawyers to advise us. But if we do talk, what we say can be used as evidence in case the DA decides to charge us with something.”

Mahsimba’s smile was gone as quick as it came. “I don’t think I’ve been in your country long enough to have committed any major crimes, Officer.”

John waved an airy hand. “Miranda us all, Sergeant Agganis. Maybe you can solve this crime right here and now and save yourself and the state a lot of investigation time.”

“Fat chance of that,” said Agganis. “Even if you confessed this second we’d still have to investigate just to make sure you weren’t lying. Perps have more rights than the victims these days.” He gave us the Miranda warning and then held up the tape recorder again. “Now, anybody mind if I use this?”

Nobody minded, and Agganis listened to the story of how we happened to find the remains of Matthew Duarte, and to my hypothesis that there might be a relationship between Mahsimba’s e-mail and Duarte’s death.

Dom, understandably, didn’t seem to be too taken with my theory. “This ain’t a television show,” he said. “Chances are that Duarte got plugged for some simple, down-to-earth reason, like most people. A woman, or money, or dope, or some combination of the three. When we start digging, you can bet we’ll find something like that, not anything to do with stolen eagles from Africa. Where can I find you if I need to, Mr. Mahsimba?”

“He’s staying with me,” said John.

“Until I find the eagles or go west to San Francisco,” said Mahsimba.

“And how long will that be?” asked Agganis.

Mahsimba shrugged a small shrug. “The death of Mr. Duarte makes my work here more complicated and my success more unlikely.”

“Well, don’t leave without telling me.”

Mahsimba gave a slight bow. “I will inform you, Sergeant.”

“And I will inform you in the unlikely chance that we stumble across any information about your Zimbabwe eagles. All right, men, I guess we’re through here for now. You can get on about your business.” Agganis put his tape recorder back into the cruiser and walked into the house.

The three of us drove back to John’s farm. There, John said, “J.W., why don’t you and Zee come over for dinner tonight? One of the twins can baby-sit the kids at your place.”

As any cook will tell you, a meal prepared by someone else is always welcome. My bluefish supper could wait until tomorrow. “Sure,” I said, “we’ll be glad to.”

Much had happened since Stan Crandel’s morning call, but there was still a lot of day left before the kids came home from school, so I headed for the Edgartown library. I was glad to be working.

Libraries are treasure houses. They are full of books, information, and entertainment, and are manned by people who actually like to help you find what you’re looking for. Little in history has caused me more despair about mankind than tales of the destruction of libraries. The ancient desolations of the great archives of Alexandria, Constantinople, and Tenochtitlán fill me with despair and anger whenever I am reminded of them. Not many people are more loathsome in my eyes than book burners.

No such people worked in the Edgartown library, only book lovers, one of whom smiled at me from behind her desk.

“What brings you here on a fine afternoon like this one, J.W.? I’d have guessed you’d be off somewhere fishing.”

“I did my fishing this morning. Now I’m in search of other game. Cecil Rhodes, to be precise.”

“Cecil Rhodes, is it? Well, go right over there to the computer and you should be able to track him down.”

When I was a lad, you tracked library subjects down in the card files, but nowadays card files are only a memory, so I went to the computer and found Cecil there. If the electricity failed, I thought grumpily, nobody would be able to find anything in modern libraries; not that it would make much difference, since the whole world would probably stop spinning.

I spent an hour reading about Cecil, about the origins of Rhodesia, and about the later transformation of Rhodesia into Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Cecil, founder of the Rhodes scholarships and dreamer of the Cape-to-Cairo railway that had never been built, hadn’t lived to see fifty, but nevertheless had managed to change the face of southern Africa for a hundred years. His success as an owner of diamond mines made all the difference.

He had been one of those sincere racists who was convinced that Anglo-Saxons were the peak of evolution and the fulfillment of a divine master plan, and he considered it his duty to make sure of the plan’s success by extending the British Empire around the world. Part of this grand design, I noted with interest, was a scheme to recover the United States for the Crown, including, presumably, Martha’s Vineyard.

He entered the Cape parliament; manipulated boundary commissions; bargained with local African chiefs; persuaded London to oppose German, Belgian, and Boer interests and support his own; negotiated, quarreled, amalgamated with opponents; annexed territory; fomented a revolution; conspired, schemed, survived censure; and otherwise did his best to establish “British dominion from the Cape to Cairo.”

His success was considerable, but native revolutionary sentiments, never far beneath the surface of European colonial rule, emerged strongly throughout Africa after World War II, and in the last quarter of the twentieth century, governments organized and run by whites were, one by one, replaced by governments dominated by black Africans. Northern Rhodesia became Zambia and Southern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, home of Abraham Mahsimba, seeker of the Zimbabwe eagles.

Unfortunately for Africa, its new black leaders were as corrupt and power hungry as the whites they had replaced, and newer revolutionary groups were now seeking to overthrow them in their turn.

Everything changes, nothing changes. Rhodesia had been born out of intrigues, ambitions, schemes, double dealings, and passion, and a hundred years later Zimbabwe was being governed the same way.

I thought about Africa’s diamond mines, gold mines, silver mines, and lead mines, about its millions of acres of rich farmland, and about the fortunes made in tourism, industry, communications, and transportation. I thought about the convolutions of African history, and about its politics, which, like the stock market, were driven in such large part by the fear and greed and ancient hatreds so well understood by Machiavelli.

Chinatown.

I found some material on Great Zimbabwe and read that. Like much of Africa, it had been raided, raped, and misunderstood by the unstoppable white migrations that had come north from the Cape in much the same fashion as white Europeans had poured west across America, sweeping all before them. On both continents, Stone Age and Iron Age people had no chance against gunpowder.

I left my reading materials on a table, as librarians prefer their customers to do, so the writings can be put back where they belong instead of elsewhere, and as I passed the desk, the woman sitting at the desk smiled.

“Find what you were looking for, J.W.?”

“I found out where I’m starting from, anyway.”

“Come back soon.”

“I will.”

The young sun shone down on the clean streets of Edgartown, and the strolling early-season tourists looked happy as they window-shopped along the narrow streets and ogled the green lawns and flowers and the great white captains’ houses that lined North Water Street. Just across the harbor channel they could look at Chappaquiddick, or, if they were more adventurous, they could take the little three-car On Time ferry to the other side and go biking or driving along the winding Chappy roads.

None of them knew of the body lying not ten miles away in a fine old West Tisbury farmhouse. And I wasn’t going to tell them about it.

I got into my truck and went home, so I could be there when the kids got out of school.

I wondered if Zee was still going to be abstracted when she got home from work, and thought old thoughts: Had family life begun to bore her? Had I begun to bore her? Was the wander-thirst upon her? Was her soul in Cathay? Did her fortieth birthday, although still a way in front of her, cast a shadow across her path? Forty had been easy for me, but maybe not even the thought of it was easy for her.

For me, thirty had been the killer birthday, because it meant, somehow, that it was time for me to grow up instead of planning to do it later. Time for me to stop preparing to live and get going on the real thing. I had been depressed for several weeks, because I’d greatly enjoyed being a child.

Maybe Zee was going through something similar. Maybe she was in one of those “there must be more to life than this” moods that can sometimes lead us to either comedy or tragedy.

The cats, Oliver Underfoot and Velcro, welcomed me home. They were in the yard, taking advantage of the late-spring sun. I’d no sooner sat down on the porch steps to have a chat with them when I heard the phone ring. For once I was near enough to the door to avoid the mad dash that I often had to make to get there before the ringing stopped.

Mattie Skye was the caller. “Plans have changed. Bring the kids with you when you come for supper. John will grill burgers and hot dogs. We’ll eat early, so your tads can get home to bed in time. Zee and I can catch up on woman things when you men have finished telling us all about finding Matthew Duarte.”

“I imagine John and Mahsimba have already told you what there is to tell.”

“If a story is worth hearing once, it’s worth hearing twice, and, besides, maybe you’ll remember something John forgot.”

“Not likely.”

“Five-thirty?”

“Sounds good.”

I hung up feeling hopeful. Maybe Mattie Skye could find out what was causing Zee’s mood.

I opened a small can of cat food, divided it into two dishes, and went to the door.

“Snack time!”

The cats, with comforting predictability, came running.