Vineyard Stalker (20 page)

The Oak Bluffs police didn't make much effort to keep their initial interviews private so after I'd given my statement I hung around to see what other people would say and what else would happen. Not much did, but I managed to hear the hotel clerk tell the police that she really didn't know anything about Fred McMahan and Angelo Vinci, and to hear Alfred Cabot tell them he'd never even seen them. Fred and Angie were just customers who had taken the room for a few days and had apparently slipped away sometime during the night without informing the desk. McMahan had paid a week's rent in cash in advance. No, they had heard no sounds of violence in the room and had no idea what the blood meant. It was very mysterious and troubling.

The chambermaid, who was next in line to tell her tale, was now calmer than when she'd come down the stairs but was far from sanguine. As she listened to her superiors give their reports, she fingered her skirt nervously, and when Cabot spoke, I thought a furtive look crossed her face before her eyes dropped and her features became enigmatic.

I wondered if she understood more English than I'd presumed, and if she had her green card. I didn't care whether she had the card, but I didn't expect her to say anything that might offend her boss or make the police interested in her. She no doubt needed her job, and the members of the island's large community of Brazilians are often wary of police since back home the cops are not necessarily friends of the poor.

To combat this notion, several island police departments now had Portuguese-speaking officers to bridge the language gap and persuade the Brazilians that the island cops really do work to protect and serve, but the police on the scene did not include such a multi-lingual officer, so when the chambermaid—Delia, by name, I learned as I listened—waved her arms and explained in fractured English how I'd asked her to go to the room and she'd found—
sangue! Mãe de Deus!
—what a calamity! Where were the two
senhors
? No, she hadn't seen them since early the day before. This morning there was a sign on the door saying not to disturb them. What a disaster! No, she knew little about them. They said hello if they met in the hall. Yes, they seemed friendly. No, she had never heard or seen any indication of violence in the room until now.
Sangue!
Seeing it, she had run right out of the room. Her eyes had flicked toward Alfred Cabot and she'd added that nothing like this had ever happened in the hotel before. It was a fine hotel that catered to only the finest of guests.

Alfred did not acknowledge the look.

A detective arrived and went upstairs. I lingered for a while longer, thinking about what I'd seen and heard, then walked out the back door into the parking lot. I went to the Chevy pickup and took note of its license number, then glanced around the lot and up at the back windows of the hotel and, seeing no one watching, opened the passenger side door and checked the glove compartment.

Has anyone actually put gloves in the glove compartment of a car? Possibly, but no one I know ever has. As I do, most people put other stuff in there, including their car registration. Delia Sanchez was one of the many. Her auto registration showed that she lived off the Vineyard Haven–Edgartown Road in Ocean Heights, actually not far from my house.

When my father bought the land where I now live, Ocean Heights was where you lived if you couldn't afford to live in a nice area of town. Now some of my neighbors live in big, new houses and joke about living in the exclusive Ocean Heights section of Edgartown.

Still, there are a lot of small houses in the neighborhood and some of them are full of people. We didn't know just how full until one of the houses sold and forty-three Brazilians had to move out and find someplace else to live. The forty-three, we learned, had lived in shifts, one third sleeping, one third working, and one third taking care of the place. They took turns sleeping in the same beds, driving the same cars, and leading quiet, courteous lives. When they left, the people next door were sad to lose such nice neighbors.

Delia lived in a neighborhood of those small houses and probably worked at least one other job in addition to chambermaiding at the Noepe Hotel, since her countrymen and -women often did that: working several jobs Americans wouldn't take, living in packed houses in conditions that Americans wouldn't tolerate, and saving money that Americans couldn't save, until they could afford to go back and live in style in Brazil, or buy houses and businesses of their own right here.

I exited Delia's pickup, looked around and still didn't see any curious eyes, and went to my truck to wait for Delia. I sat there for quite a while, reading my copy of John Skye's translation of
Gawain and the Green Knight
. Good stuff. Gawain, like many of us, managed to get himself into an impossible situation and ended up bending the code in an effort to get out of his predicament. The ax blow he got on his neck, however, wasn't fatal and he lived to tell his tale and even be hailed for his gallantry, which was more than most of us get when our lies are revealed.

I wondered if Delia had ever read
Gawain
.

Probably not.

Delia came out of the hotel's back door just as Gawain's host's beautiful wife entered Gawain's bedroom for the first time. She got into the pickup and drove out of the lot. I followed her home, and when she parked beside three other aging vehicles in the yard, I pulled in behind her and got out. She gave me a worried look.

Good.

“Delia,” I said. “I'd like to talk with you.”

“I'm very tired,” she said, glancing toward the house. “I've told the police what happened. You were there. You heard.”

“I was there, and I heard what you said. But you didn't tell everything you know. I want you to tell me what you didn't tell them.”

She stiffened her spine. “I told them everything.”

“No. You lied.” She paled and I put an understanding smile on my face. “Or perhaps you just forgot.”

“I don't know what you mean,
senhor
.”

Behind her the front door of the house opened and three men came out and looked at us.

“If I want,” I said, “I can take you to police headquarters and talk with you there. I'd rather not do that. May I see your green card or your H2B, please?”

The men behind her exchanged looks, and one of them went back inside. Not all foreign workers have green cards.

Delia clutched her hands together. “I have my card, but I've misplaced it.”

I looked at her, then at the two men listening with concerned faces. They, I guessed, knew where their green cards were, if they had them. I said, “Delia, I don't need to see your green card now, but I do have to know what you didn't tell the police. If you tell me, I'll forget about your card.”

One of the men on the porch said something to her in what I took to be Portuguese. She spoke back and got a reply, then she looked back at me.

“I need my job.”

“I want you to have it.”

“My husband doesn't know if you can be trusted. He says immigration people often lie.”

“Is that man your husband?” I looked at him until he dropped his eyes.

“Yes.”

“Do you have children?”

“Three.”

“Then you must work for your family. I have children, too, and I must work for them and my wife. Listen to me. When Alfred Cabot spoke to the police, your face changed. Why? You must tell me the truth.”

She looked miserable. “I'll lose my job!”

“No. He'll never know what passes between us here. I give you my word of honor.”

The man on the porch spoke again, and she replied, then said to me, “He says that many immigration agents have no honor.”

I looked at him again and this time his angry eyes did not drop. I nodded slightly, and looked back at the woman. I kept my voice gentle. “He wants to protect you, but in this case you'll have to trust me, because if you won't talk to me you'll have to find that green card right now.”

“
Deus!
” She crossed herself, then took a deep breath. “Senhor Cabot said he had never seen Senhors McMahan and Vinci, but that is not so. I once saw him enter their room and heard their voices. I had been cleaning another room and had just stepped out into the hall.” Her eyes were fearful. “
Senhor
, if you tell this to anyone I will lose my work!”

“Are you sure it was Cabot?”

“
Sim
. I'm sure. I saw him standing there, knocking, and then the door opened and he went into the room and I heard men's voices. He never saw me.”

“Could you hear what they said?”

“No. I thought nothing of it and went on to my next job. It was only when I heard him tell the police that he had not met them…” Her voice faded.

I took her hand in mine and shook it gently. “Thank you, Delia. Don't worry. I'll tell no one what you've said here and if anyone asks me I'll tell them that you have your green card and showed it to me.” I flicked my eyes to the man in front of the door. “And tell your husband that he has a brave and beautiful wife.”

I got back into my truck and drove home. It was time for lunch and I'd had a long morning. As I drove I wondered if perhaps I should get a job working for the immigration department. Apparently I had the proper look to intimidate illegal aliens. But, no, I wasn't really intended for that sort of work. I didn't care whether Delia was here legally, and I disliked myself for having frightened her into her confession. It wasn't the first time I'd bullied someone in the name of a cause I thought was just, but this instance made me feel worse than most. I hoped I'd convinced her and her husband that she was in no danger from me.

Could most people look back at moments of cruelty and pettiness in their past actions, and still feel red-faced or worse, or was I an exception to the rule? I recalled Dostoyevsky writing that even if we tried to write totally honest memoirs and had been guaranteed that no one would ever, ever see them, we'd still lie. I thought that I probably would.

At home I made lunch, brought the cats up on the latest development in the case, and asked them whether Fred McMahan and Angie had lied to me about not knowing who had hired them, or whether Delia had lied about seeing Cabot go into McMahan's room. They said they'd give the questions some thought. I asked them whether Cabot's meeting with Fred, if indeed they had met, had anything to do with the vandalism. I told them that if I had to choose a liar, I'd choose Fred, but I've been wrong before. They agreed that I had.

Maybe Dom Agganis knew somebody in Boston who could put the screws to Angie, who seemed the weaker member of the McMahan-Vinci combo. If Angie could be persuaded to talk, we might learn that he and Fred did know their employer, and if that employer ended up being Alfred Cabot, as I now suspected, my life would be a lot simpler because my job would be over.

But was Cabot Fred's boss? Maybe not, but the odds seemed good that there was something nefarious going on between them, else why would Cabot lie about never having even seen Fred? Presuming, of course, that Delia was telling the truth, which I thought she was since she believed she might get deported if she didn't spill the real beans.

The truth was elusive because the world is full of liars.

I had a Sam Adams with my fish sandwich and salad, then drove to state police headquarters. Olive Otero was there.

“Did you hear about the business at the Noepe Hotel?” I asked.

“Yes, we did. There are some lab guys over there right now, taking blood samples and finding whatever else they can. You were there, of course. What is it about you, J.W., that always gets you involved when there's trouble?”

“I'm not always involved. I'm sometimes involved. I don't know if you got this bit of information in your report, but rumor has it that Alfred Cabot met with Fred McMahan in his room sometime in the past few days.”

“Rumors aren't worth much in court, but I'll humor you. Why should we pay attention to this one?”

“Because Cabot told the OB cops that he'd never seen McMahan.”

Olive became more attentive, and dug a report out of a desk drawer. “Right you are,” she said, after a few pages of fingering and a pause to read. “I don't suppose you'd care to tell me the source of your rumor?”

“A high administration source who requested anonymity,” I said. “I have too much integrity to name the source.”

She leaned back in her chair. “Would your integrity withstand a bit of time in jail for withholding evidence?”

“Absolutely. The security of our great nation rests on the fourth estate's right to maintain the confidentiality of its sources.”

She smiled. “You're not a member of the fourth estate.”

“That being the case, I'll just deny I ever told you anything.”

“You trust your tipster?”

“I think so. I didn't really trust Fred McMahan when he told me he didn't know who'd hired him, but he might be hard to squeeze. Angie isn't as tough as Fred. I think he can be talked into trading information for a walk.”