Vineyard Enigma (4 page)

Zee was glad to learn of Mattie’s invitation, and Joshua and Diana were even more delighted because it was a school night and they were going visiting anyway, and, better yet, because they were going to see the Skye twins, two of their favorite people.

While Zee got out of her working clothes and into her civvies, I leaned against the bedroom door frame and told her about meeting Mahsimba and finding Matthew Duarte’s body.

Since Zee was a nurse and worked at the hospital emergency ward, suffering and death were not new to her; still, homicide is always interesting to most people, since they find it almost impossible to imagine why anyone would do such a thing, and Zee was instantly attentive.

“Shot in the head, you say?”

“That’s the initial report, anyway.”

“When did it happen? Do they know?”

“The medical examiner will give his best guess about that when they ship the body to the mainland. My impression was that he hadn’t been dead very long.”

“Brrrr. It gives me the creeps to think that we’ve got a murderer walking around the island.”

I knew what she meant, but both of us also knew that the Vineyard had at least its share of criminals. Anyone who doubted it needed only to hang around the courthouse on Thursdays and listen to the proceedings as lawyers and their clients appeared before the judge. Every week, drug dealers, carousers, thieves, wife beaters, drunk-and-disorderlies, and life’s other losers paraded by His Honor. Most, to the disgust of the police, were released onto the streets again to continue their lives of stupidity and petty crime.

We knew, too, that it’s sometimes a short step between lesser villainies and larger ones, and that most criminal violence occurs between people who walk on the wild side, so I wasn’t surprised when Zee went on to say, “I wonder what Matthew Duarte did to get himself killed. I thought he was one of those proper people who only dealt with other proper people.”

“Even art dealers get killed now and then.”

“Was he robbed? Did you notice any signs that the house had been burgled?”

“No, but I didn’t see much of the inside. Maybe he got shot by a jealous husband.”

“Or by his wife or a double-crossed girlfriend. I think I heard that he was a ladies’ man. Maybe one of them didn’t like being replaced.”

“Did you get that from the famous hospital grapevine? What else have you heard about him?”

“Nothing,” she said. “We mostly stick to rumors about people doing other people wrong. I was just reading about the Headless Horseman. They don’t know who did him in either. Spooky. Do you suppose the same person killed both of them?”

I told her my theory about the Horseman maybe being David Brownington.

“That’s a pretty big ‘maybe,’ Jefferson.”

“You’re not the only one who thinks so, but I’m not tossing the idea out while it’s still warm.”

“Well, it would explain some things. But didn’t you say Brownington was last heard of out on the West Coast?”

“All I know is what people tell me and what I read in the papers.”

“Are you going to work with this Mr. Mahsimba?”

“I haven’t really decided, but there’s good money in it. I should probably do something that will bring in some cash.”

“Money! I make all the money we need. You should do something interesting. We’re getting to be old fogies.”

Were we? I studied her as she buttoned her blouse. She looked more beautiful than ever, as many women do after bearing their children. Her long blue-black hair was in a braid, her eyes were dark and deep, and she moved lithely and smoothly, like a jungle cat. She didn’t look like a fogie to me.

Maybe I was the fogie. I thought again that perhaps my lifestyle had begun to bore her. After all, how many women would long remain satisfied with a husband who lacked ambition; who had no steady job; who housed his family in an old hunting camp with a leaky porch; who scrounged from the dump and the thrift shop; who straightened used nails; who drove an ancient, rusty Land Cruiser; who loved fishing, loafing with books, drinking beer, cooking, and sipping cold vodka on the rocks; and who aspired to no higher form of life?

The more I thought about it, the more possible it seemed that I was the root of her malaise.

“The job does interest me,” I said. “I’m already learning a lot about things I never knew I didn’t know.”

“There,” she said. “I’m presentable, so let’s hit the road. It’ll be good to see the Skye bunch again!” She ducked past me, paused, came back and gave me a kiss on the cheek, and went on again.

We went in her little Jeep, it being the more civilized of our vehicles, and soon were unloading in front of the Skyes’ house. Joshua and Diana immediately spotted a twin with a horse down by the barn and sprinted in that direction. Zee and I were halfway to the house when the front door opened and Mattie came to meet us with hugs and words of welcome. I handed her a bottle of the Jackson house Cabernet Sauvignon (cheap but not bad), and followed the ladies inside.

“The gentlemen are on the back porch with a jug of martinis,” said Mattie, leading the way. “We’ll join them.”

The Skyes’ back porch overlooked a lawn rolling down to a small pond, where there were goldfish and frogs and, at the moment, two ducks. The late-afternoon sun cast the shadows of the surrounding oaks across the water, and a small southwest wind hushed through the trees and rippled the surface of the pond.

As we came out through the screened door, John looked up, then put down his drink, climbed out of his chair, and came to meet us.

He shook my hand and exchanged hugs and kisses with Zee. “Zee, let me introduce you to Mahsimba.”

Behind him, Mahsimba flowed to his feet. John turned and Zee and Mahsimba saw each other for the first time. Both hesitated for half a heartbeat, and in that moment I felt some current of energy, some sort of electricity, leap between them as though a switch had been thrown. I saw Zee take a breath and I saw Mahsimba’s golden eyes shimmer. Their hands were meeting, lingering, then dropping, and I heard them saying conventional greeting words through smiling lips.

I knew that something very unconventional had just happened even when Mahsimba’s hand was shaking mine, even though those liquid eyes looking up into mine were as fathomless as before.

I wondered if John or Mattie had felt what I’d felt. But John was pouring drinks from a crystal pitcher, adding olives (black for Zee, green for me), and passing the martinis to us, giving no sign that anything novel had occurred. And Mattie had seated Zee beside her and the two of them were already catching up on what had happened in their lives during the past months when the Skyes were all up in Weststock and the Jacksons were down here on the Vineyard.

My martini was icy and smooth. It wanted me to drink it fast and have another, but I made myself sip small sips as I found a chair.

“Cheers,” said John, lifting his glass. “Well, J.W., have you decided whether you can give Mahsimba some help?”

“I’m interested enough to have spent some time in the library this afternoon catching up on my southern African history and current events in Zimbabwe.”

Mahsimba made a small gesture with his hand. “If you have any reservations, please feel free to decline this assignment that your friends have imposed upon you.” His eyes flicked toward Zee and then came back. “Your family is certainly more important than my search.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “And we should remember that at least one man is already dead.”

“I think you should take the job.” Zee’s clear voice surprised me.

“I thought you and Mattie were catching up on last winter,” I said.

“We’ll finish doing that later.” She looked at Mahsimba. “Jeff ’s told me everything, and he’s just the man you need. He was a policeman, he knows the island, and he knows how to snoop.”

Snoop. An accurate word, but not one preferred by investigators. J. W. Jackson: snoop.

“And,” said Zee, “he’s not afraid of much.”

Mahsimba’s eyes flicked between us.

“I’m afraid of enough things,” I said to him. “In this case it isn’t a matter of being afraid; it’s a matter of me not knowing much. If you know where you want to go and who you want to talk to, I can probably take you there.”

“The only name I had when I came here belongs to a dead man,” said Mahsimba.

“I don’t know how to advise you.”

Mahsimba sipped his drink. “I’m told that this island is awash with money. Where there is money, there are places to spend it. I have looked through the Yellow Pages of your telephone book and found listings of many artists and art galleries. I will begin my search by interviewing people in those galleries. The art world is simultaneously vast and small. People know other people, and knowledge and gossip pass rapidly from mouth to ear. Perhaps I will hear a name associated with the eagles. If I do, you can help me find the person. Or perhaps you can make explorations other than mine.”

It was like casting for fish in unknown waters. You didn’t know if there was anything to catch or, if there was, how to catch it. But as the surf casters say, “If you don’t throw, you don’t know.”

Zee’s voice came again: “I think you should do it, Jeff.”

I thought of the current that had danced between her and Mahsimba and wondered if my answer had anything to do with that.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Excellent,” said Mahsimba.

Zee cast her eyes around the group and smiled. “To seal the bargain you all have to come to our place for dinner tomorrow. Mahsimba, is there anything you don’t eat?”

He smiled. “I am omnivorous, Mrs. Jackson.”

Her tongue touched her lips. “Call me Zee,” she said. “Just Zee.”

Since my bluefish wasn’t big enough to serve to the crowd that was coming, I stuck the fillets in the freezer and spent the rest of the morning preparing the makings for paella, which, along with French bread and salad, was going to be supper.

Paella is easy to cook, but it takes some time to get the ingredients ready. In this case, I was going to make paella à la Valenciana, using a recipe I’d gotten from a Spanish cookbook written in broken English that I’d found at a yard sale. Long ago some Spanish woman had, according to the introduction, written it for expatriate Englishwomen living in Spain. How it got to Martha’s Vineyard was yet another island mystery that I was never going to solve.

When I finished my paella preparations, I used another recipe in the book and made a flan for dessert. My mouth was already watering. Then I got into the truck and drove toward Edgartown to talk with Al Butters about his years in Africa.

As I went, I thought about the previous evening, when Mahsimba, at Zee’s urging, had told stories about his experiences in Africa and elsewhere. How he had explored the ruins of Great Zimbabwe; how, when he had worked as a safari guide, he had taken tourists on game walks through the bush, carrying a .458-caliber “walking stick” just in case they ran into some aggressive animal; how a pride of lions could lie down in grass and disappear so completely that you could walk between a dozen cats and never know they were there; how you could usually get an advancing elephant to retreat by stepping forward, holding up your hand, and saying loudly but firmly, “Stop!”; how naive he’d been when he first went to study in Pretoria, and how later he had rowed at Oxford while studying African history.

He was a modest and charming teller of tales, jesting at himself and making light of the perils he had faced and the discoveries he’d made at university. Zee had been enthralled. So had I, for that matter, for he had spoken of places I’d never been and of adventures I’d never imagined. Zee had never seemed more buoyant or bright-eyed as she listened to him and sat beside him at the supper table, talking. Once I’d caught Mattie looking at the two of them. Then she’d glanced at me and met my eyes and looked back at her plate.

We’d left for home with Zee reminding them all that they were coming to our house for supper the next day.

Now the preparations for that supper were complete, and I could begin my efforts to help track down the stone eagles.

My ignorance of the island’s art scene was going to be a major disadvantage, but the death of Matthew Duarte was too coincidental with Mahsimba’s arrival for me to dismiss the likelihood of a connection between those events. And if, in fact, there was a link between them, a person or persons yet unknown clearly had a powerful interest in the eagles. And where powerful interests are at work, it’s always possible that they’ll leave some traces of their labor behind.

The questions were just who that person or those persons might be, and why murder, which always attracts the attention of the authorities and is therefore usually a last resort in thoughtful problem solving, had seemed a necessary solution to some dilemma.

Of course it was possible that there really was no hook between Matthew’s death and Mahsimba’s arrival, and that the cops were probably right to put their money on something much more mundane: a dispute over a woman or money or drugs, or one of the other commonplace causes of killings. For murder’s motives are usually as simple and crude as are the weapons and some or all of the actors in the drama. As more than one person has observed, murder victims don’t get poisoned in the conservatory by rare venom from some obscure snake native only to the upper Amazon; they get bashed in the head by a brick in an alley. And some drunk, like as not a close friend or relative, did it, not the vicar of Christ Church, who feared that an ancient, forgotten scandal might prevent him from becoming archbishop.

Al and Barbara Butters lived with their dog, Jake, an aging golden retriever, out near Trapps Pond, not far from the beach. If you looked northeast from their wraparound porch you could see Cape Cod on the far side of Nantucket Sound. If you looked northwest you had a good view of the pond. Lately, as money rolled over the island like a tidal wave, huge new houses had been built in the neighborhood, so that the Butters house, which had once seemed large and comfortable, now seemed almost small.

Not so small, however, that claustrophobia made Al and Barbara feel like moving. Their place was plenty big enough for them, Jake, and for their collection of Africana, which they’d bought during the years when they’d lived in Johannesburg, where Al had finished his career in the import-export business.

I hooked left at the Triangle and drove through the parking lot in front of the Your Market liquor store and Trader Fred’s emporium, where you can always get good stuff cheap. I took another left on the Oak Bluffs–Edgartown road, then turned right into Cow Bay and took the dirt road to the Butters place. Almost immediately I had to pull over to one side to let Miguel Periera’s small, refrigerated truck pass.

Miguel had been a wild island boy, who in his youth was, as they say, “known to the police,” and had spent a little time in the gray-bar hotel, but who had then managed to straighten himself out and find his niche in respectable island society. Miguel had done this by creating Periera Food Service, a firm that catered to Vineyarders who rebelled against outrageous island prices and paid him to go off-island and buy them groceries and liquor on the mainland. Periera Food Service now seemed to be doing just fine, thank you.

When both of us had been in our teens, Miguel and I had briefly shared an interest in a girl named Rose Shaw. Rose was another of those young islanders who had not gone off to college after high school but had stayed home instead. Rose, whose prospects were limited at best, had married Jim Abrams, a young neighbor who had almost immediately been drafted and killed in a training exercise, leaving her with his insurance money. She had used it to study art in Boston before returning to the Vineyard and, a few years later, moving in with Miguel without benefit of clergy.

Now Miguel stopped his truck and rolled down his driver’s-side window. I did the same. He was a stocky, good-looking guy who looked younger than I knew him to be.

“How ya doin’, J.W.?”

“Okay. How’s business?”

He gestured at the closest new summer house. “Picking up now the season’s coming. Be better as soon as these places start filling up. Not too many people around right now. Season’s just getting started.”

“You’ll be a rich man by Labor Day.”

“You can contribute to my retirement plan by giving me an order.”

“I’m too poor to be able to afford you, Miguel.”

He laughed. “Too cheap, you mean!”

“That, too.”

He laughed again and drove on.

The new houses beside the road were gigantic. Like most such houses on the island, they were simply summer “cottages” whose owners presumably had winter mansions somewhere else. There is a lot of money in this world, and a good hunk of it was being spent on Martha’s Vineyard, changing the place forever and, many said, for the worse.

The changes that had affected me the most during my island years were not the big new houses but the closing of access to the hunting and fishing spots my father and I and other fishermen and hunters had used when I was a kid. Those locked gates and
NO TRESPASSING
signs had begun to appear years before the current money boom.

Frost was right about walls, but the people who had come and were still coming to the island, buying up whatever land was available with their endless money, didn’t read Frost, or, if they did, didn’t believe him, or, if they believed him, didn’t care. I did believe him, so I had no
NO TRESPASSING
or
PRIVATE PROPERTY
signs or fences on my fifteen acres.

The Butters house was finished with weathered-gray cedar shingles and circled with a roofed porch. There was a combined garage and barn off to one side and a green lawn tying everything together. Cow Bay had been a quiet place for many years, but was now less so as the new neighboring palaces filled with their summer inhabitants.

I parked and knocked on the door. Barbara Butters opened it.

“Well, J.W. What brings you to these parts? Come in.”

Barbara was a sleek sixty-five or so, very neat and slim. She waved me into the front hall as Jake came up wagging his tail to say hello. He sniffed the scents of Oliver Underfoot and Velcro on my hand but let me in anyway. Jake was a proper dog: big and friendly. If you were going to have a dog, Jake was the kind to have.

“There’s no wind at all,” I said to Barbara, “and I figured that not even Al would go sailing in a dead calm, so I came to see him before it breezes up.”

“Smart move. He’s in his den, reading about whaling ships in the old days. Go on in.”

I did that, passing wall hangings, and shelves holding wood and stone carvings and finely woven baskets, most of which, I knew from past visits, had been brought from southern Africa.

Al Butters’s den was a comfortable room, revealing its owner’s interests and personality. Its walls were lined with books, more fine African crafts and artwork, and paintings and photos of boats and ships. A chessboard holding a partially played game sat on a small carved table against one wall. Al’s desk was in a corner, and an old, worn leather chair sat beneath a reading light. Al climbed out of the chair as I came in and set aside a battered book.

“J.W. Come in.”

His hand was leathery but his grip was gentle. He was a hearty-looking seventy or so, weathered by days of sailing. His eyes were sharp and his face was that of a happy man.

“I need some information,” I said, “and I thought you might be able to supply it or at least get me pointed in the right direction.”

“If I can, I will. What do you need to know?”

“How to find two stone eagles taken from Great Zimbabwe a hundred years ago.”

He whistled and his bushy brows lifted. “Is that all?” He waved me toward his desk chair. “It sounds like there’s a story here, and I’d like to hear it.”

“Me, too,” said Barbara, seating herself beside the chess table. “We visited those ruins more than once while we lived in Johannesburg, J.W. They’re magnificent.”

“I’ve only seen pictures.”

“Someday you’ll get there,” said Al. “I thought those eagles were all in museums. In fact, we’ve seen some of them there.

“The floor is yours.”

So I told him about the call I’d gotten from Stanley Crandel and about meeting Mahsimba and about the previous day’s conversations and events, including the discovery of the body.

“Matthew Duarte, dead?” Barbara put a hand to her lips. “I can’t believe it. Why, we saw him at Charles Mauch’s party just last week! I must call Connie! Are you sure it was murder?”

“The medical examiner will make the official decision, but I’d say so. Who’s Connie?”

“Matthew’s wife. She told me at the party that she’d be over on Nantucket this week, visiting friends. She may not even know about what’s happened to Matthew. I should tell the police where she is.”

She rose and hurried from the room. Al Butters looked into space for a long moment then met my gaze. “Connie’s heart may not be broken by the news. The gossip mill has it that Matthew’s been talking divorce.”

“Another woman?”

He made a small gesture with one hand. “Matthew liked the ladies and they liked him. Connie is his second or third wife.”

On Martha’s Vineyard it sometimes seems that everyone has been married to everyone else at one time or another. Maybe it’s a result of the empty winters, when people have too much time to be bored with their own spouses and to fantasize about their neighbors’ husbands and wives.

Al went on. “You say you think there may be a tie-in between Mahsimba’s e-mail and Matthew’s death?”

I shrugged. “I think it’s possible, but it’s a police case and they may think differently. Anyway, my situation is that I’ve agreed to help Mahsimba while he’s here on the island, but I don’t know where to start. I’m here today because you know African art and you may know other people who share that interest. If the eagles are really on the island, one of those people may know something about them.”

He frowned. “I don’t think I know any art thieves or murderers, J.W. And I’ve not heard one word about the two eagles you’re looking for.”

“I’m not investigating a murder, and I’m not sure the eagles can be considered stolen art. The killing and the eagles may not have anything to do with each other.”

“But you think they might.”

“I think it’s possible,” I said. “If there is a link, the police will probably find it anyway. All I’m interested in is locating the birds, but if you want to know the truth, I doubt that they’re on the island or ever have been.”

“But you still want names.”

“Yes. Of people who know about art, especially African art. Maybe one of them knows something or has heard something I can use. Probably not. I’ve told Mahsimba that I’d nose around.”

He rubbed his jaw. “I’ve heard that murder victims are often killed by people they know. You were a policeman. Is that true?”

“It is as far as I know.”

“So Matthew might have been killed by an acquaintance. Someone he knew.” He hesitated. “And someone I might know.”