A Shoot on Martha's Vineyard

by Philip R. Craig

  The front-page story included my role as discoverer of Ingalls’s body, and was based on police reports, as near as I could tell. I was described as a well-known island fisherman. Later, I was also identified as an outspoken critic of the DEP’s decision to close Norton’s Point.

  I learned that an autopsy had revealed that Ingalls had died as a result of a single gunshot wound to the chest, that the gun had been fired from fairly close range, and that the weapon, not yet found by the police, was probably a .38 or a nine-millimeter.

  I suspected that my old police .38 and Zee’s little Beretta 84F and her new .45 would soon bring the police to my door with a warrant that would allow them to take the guns away for test firing. That was all right with me, since I was sure none of them was the murder weapon.

  I read on and learned about Ingalls’s aristocratic North Shore background, his Ivy League education, his interest in the East, his commitment to the environment, and, finally, the fact that due to his love of the Vineyard, he was going to be buried on the island. The funeral was scheduled for Monday. His parents, who had been traveling in Europe, were already on the island, staying in Ingalls’s house in Chilmark. Other relatives, friends, and business associates were gathering from various parts of the United States. I didn’t think that many people would show up at my funeral.

  The police were busy with their investigation and were asking for assistance from anyone who had information that might help solve the crime.

  I put down the paper and took Joshua out into the yard. I sat him under an umbrella so the sun wouldn’t eat him, then spent an hour in the garden pulling weeds while I thought things over. Weeding is good for that. Your hands do one kind of work and your brain can do another. In this case, my hands were doing the better job of the two.

  Out beyond Sengekontacket Pond, the August People were abundant. Cars lined the road on the barrier beach, and on their far side were bright umbrellas in the sand. There were brighter kites in the air, and colorful Wind-surfer sails moved back and forth on the blue water just beyond the beach. Overhead, the pale blue summer arched high above wheeling gulls, and the hot summer sun beat down.

  I wondered how many of the people over there knew or cared about the death of Lawrence Ingalls. More than are usually aware of the deaths of strangers, I guessed, for a killing in Eden is worthy of a comfortable chat with your neighbor on the next beach towel. I wondered if any of them had put me on their suspect lists and if, indeed, there were any other names on those lists.

  The sun climbed higher and Joshua’s umbrella shadow moved off him. I cleaned myself off in the outdoor shower and took Joshua in for lunch. Somewhere Zee and Drew Mondry would soon be getting together for a lunch of their own. Tarzan and Jane. Val and a black-haired Aleta.

  What lovely woman would say no to an offer to appear in a motion picture? And was there any reason for Zee to do so? I could think of none at all.

  After lunch, while I was mowing the grass, an Edgar-town cruiser came down the driveway. The chief got out. I was sweating and was glad to take a break. I shut off the mower, picked up Joshua from under his umbrella, and walked over to the car.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” I said.

  “I figured you might be. I didn’t bother getting a warrant. I gonna need one?”

  “No, you don’t need one. Come on in.”

  He followed me into the house. In the kitchen, I passed Joshua to him. “Hold this guy,” I said.

  The chief was a grandpa, and used to kids. He and Joshua eyed each other.

  “I’ll say one thing for you, laddie,” said the chief. “You don’t look a thing like your dad.”

  I got Zee’s Beretta, her .45, and my Smith & Wesson out of the gun cabinet and brought them back to the kitchen.

  “These what you want?”

  “That’s them. You got any other handguns I don’t know about?” “Nope.”

  “Well, the forty-five is the wrong caliber, but I’ll take it along, too.”

  I found a paper bag and put the pistols into it. “Here.” traded the bag for Joshua, who seemed glad to be back in familiar arms.

  The chief looked almost embarrassed. “I know these aren’t the weapons, but we have to check them out.”

  “I know. But get Zee’s forty-five back as quick as you can. Manny Fonseca’s got her lined up for another shooting contest on the mainland, and she’s going to need lots of practice.”

  “It shouldn’t take long, but I’ll have to keep the guns until the tests come back.” “I know.”

  He turned toward the door, then hesitated and turned back. “I know you didn’t do it, but you’re a suspect anyway. You understand?”

  “Do what you have to do,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He started out of the house, then paused. “Oh, something you maybe should know. I got hold of Zack Delwood and asked him some questions. He was a bit put out at you.”

  “Zack’s put out at somebody all the time.”

  “Yeah, but this time he’s really irked.”

  “Why?”

  “He figures you’re the one who steered me to him about this killing. Put him on the suspect list, as it were.”

  A pox on Zack Delwood. “Where’d he get that idea?”

  “You and him have always ruffled each other’s feathers, so maybe he’s just been looking for a reason to pound on you. I told him that you didn’t finger him, but being the kind of guy he is, he figures I’m lying.” He shook his head. “When I talked to Zack, I thought maybe he might have done Ingalls in, but later I talked to Iowa and Walter and they told me Zack was fishing beside them up at the Jetties when Ingalls got himself shot. If I can track Zack down again, I’ll tell him he’s off the suspect list, but mean-while keep an eye out for him. He may try to put his fist through your face.”

  Terrific. First Ingalls takes a swing at me, then Beth Harper tries to shoot me, and now Zack Delwood was after my head. Being innocent was dangerous business.

  When Zee got home that evening, she told me that she’d agreed to try out for a role in the movie. She said that Drew Mondry had caught an afternoon plane to Boston, on his way back to California, and that he thanked me for everything and looked forward to seeing me soon.

  “You’ll be a star,” I said, handing her her ice-cold Luksusowa martini. “You’ll light up the night.”

  — 17 —

  On Monday it was raining, making the sad business of a funeral even sadder. Zee had the day off, and preferred to stay at home with Joshua instead of going out into the drizzle to attend the memorial service for somebody she’d only seen once in her life. I had more motive than she did, so I sat in the back row of the church during the funeral and tried to look inconspicuous, certain that the mourners would prefer that a suspect in the case not attend the rites.

  There were a lot of people there, steaming and dripping, and I recognized some of them. Beth Harper was sitting with people I took to be Lawrence Ingalls’s family: an elderly woman and man I presumed were his mother and father, and a couple of fortyish couples I guessed were his siblings and their spouses. Another woman seemed to be with the group yet somehow not part of it, and I wondered who she was. A cousin? A friend of the family? I couldn’t guess.

  I recognized several members of the Marshall Lea Foundation, including Jud Wilber, the president, and Dina Witherspoon, the secretary. Somewhat to my surprise, I also saw Joe and Toni Begay, with Hanna on Toni’s lap. And to my greater surprise, I saw Connie Berube. Beneath her wet raincoat, Connie was wearing a dark dress that looked, even to my unpracticed eyes, quite a bit out of date. She stared expressionlessly at the minister, who was evoking the mercy of his God on behalf of Lawrence Ingalls’s soul.

  Officer Olive Otero of the state police was wearing civvies, and sitting not too far from me, eyeing the crowd. On the other side of the room Tony D’Agostine, one of Edgartown’s finest, was doing the same. I thought there were probably another two or three representatives of law and order in the crowd, too, s
ince it is a truism that killers sometimes come to the funerals of their victims, or visited their graves over the following months and even years. I was sure that none of the police had overlooked me with their roving eyes.

  When the minister finished commending the soul of the deceased to the Almighty, I slipped out ahead of the crowd, drove up to the Chilmark cemetery through the summer rain, and found a parking place before the funeral procession arrived.

  The gravestone of a famous TV and movie celebrity, dead from, what else? an overdose of illegal chemicals, adorns the entrance to the cemetery. Originally, the grave lay elsewhere on the grounds, but when the feet of hoards of pilgrims to the holy site threatened to wear a highway through the graveyard and do damage to the memorials of its other residents, smart Chilmarkers moved the star’s stone to the very gate of the cemetery. It is now the first gravestone you see, and there, ever since, fans have adorned the site with beer cans, joints, needles, flowers, and other memorabilia associated with their hero’s fast and eventful life. The gravestone is the second most popular tourist site on the Vineyard, being nosed out only by the bridge on Chappaquiddick.

  People are curious animals, as many members of the same odd group have observed.

  I stood beneath a tree some distance from the dark and soggy rectangle into which Ingalls’s coffin would be lowered, and watched the graveside rituals. People stood under umbrellas or with their collars turned up, and the rain came down, not too hard, but steadily, a soaking rain, the kind gardeners love to have for their plants. But today they were planting Lawrence Ingalls, who didn’t need the moisture and would never need anything again, in fact. He had come to the end of needing or wanting and was now due to be recycled into something other than he had been as mortal man.

  The energy that had taken the shape of the human being he had been would not be lost, but it would take a new form: first, as food for the living things that eat us in our graves; then, probably, as food for whatever eats the things that eat us, for everything that lives eats and is eaten; then, further along the food chain, perhaps as fertilizer for some yet to be born blade of grass, and later as heat, or light, or new life, or some other earthly or celestial substance or power or potency. It would change, but it wouldn’t be lost, for energy is never lost.

  Under trees and umbrellas, some not too far from me, the police who had been at the church still watched the mourners, having come out into the rain to do their duty and maybe spot somebody who didn’t really belong there or who was acting oddly.

  I couldn’t see anyone who seemed to fit that bill better than I did.

  I waited until the service was over before leaving. As I walked to the Land Cruiser, Tony D’Agostine came along-side me. His raincoat and rain hat were shiny and trickling water.

  “Hell of a day for a funeral, J.W.”

  “The dead don’t mind what kind of day it is.”

  “I’d like it to be sunny when they put me under,” said Tony. “I want people to be happy and to have a party with plenty of beer. I don’t want a sad bunch in the rain, like here today. Saw you in church.”

  “And I saw you. And Olive Otero. And Joe Begay. I guess he was there for the same reason the Marshall Lea bunch was. Environmentalists all.”

  “What were you doing there, anyway?”

  “Same as you, Tony. I wanted to see who showed up. I didn’t expect to see Moonbeam’s wife.”

  “I guess she kept house for Ingalls. They were his nearest neighbors.”

  “Who was the extra woman with the family? The one with reddish hair.”

  “Ah. That was Ingalls’s ex. Woman named Barbara Singleton. She came down with his folks.”

  I gave that some thought. “His ex? She seemed pretty close to the family.”

  “Yeah. Seems a little odd, maybe, but sometimes when a couple splits up, the parents hang on to both of them. Sometimes, even, Mom and Dad like the ex in-law better than they like their own kid.”

  True. “You think Ingalls’s parents liked her better than him?”

  Tony brushed water from his mustache. “Don’t put words in my mouth, J.W. Size of this funeral, he had a lot of friends.”

  “He had at least one enemy.”

  “Olive Otero thinks she knows who it was. You.”

  We got to the Land Cruiser. I said, “The only time I saw him alive, we didn’t get along. But somebody else killed him.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Tony, turning his back to the wind, “they’ve been running tests on those weapons of yours.” There was a restrained excitement in his voice.

  “And?”

  “And none of your pistols fired the round that killed Ingalls.”

  Even though I’d known that must be true, I felt an unexpected feeling of relief. Being innocent doesn’t free you from the fear of guilt. With the relief came a bit of the anger that children feel when they’ve been falsely accused. I kept it out of my voice.

  “When can we get them back? Zee’s supposed to be practicing for a meet.”

  Tony’s voice was eager. He had something to say. “You’ll have to talk to the chief about that. I know you’re not surprised about your own weapons being clean, but we tested another one and came up golden. The thirty-eight you took off Beth Harper.”

  That was interesting. I looked at Tony. “Ingalls was shot with that gun?”

  Tony nodded. “No doubt about it.”

  “That was Ingalls’s own gun. Beth Harper got it out of his house before she came hunting me.”

  He nodded. “That’s what she says, anyway. The gun did belong to him. There’s no doubt about that. His father identified it as one he gave Ingalls years ago, along with some others. Rifles and shotguns and the like. Family heirlooms of some kind. Belonged to a great-uncle who hunted elephants, or something like that.” Tony squinted at me through the rain. “Another thing. There’s only two sets of prints on the gun. Yours and Beth Harper’s. What do you make of that?”

  What did I make of that? I made that my prints were on the murder weapon. “What do I make of it? I make that Beth Harper’s are there because she tried to shoot me, and mine are there because I took the gun away from her. What do you make of it?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t make nothing of it, but Olive Otero likes it a lot. She thinks it ties you tighter to the killing, and she’d like to make an arrest pretty soon.” He pulled back a sleeve and glanced at his watch. “I gotta be going. I ain’t supposed to hobnob with criminals.”

  He smiled slightly, waved, and walked away.

  Fifty yards down the road, Officer Olive Otero was leaning against her unmarked car, watching me, I got into the Land Cruiser and drove past her out of the cemetery. Having Olive Otero suspicious of me didn’t make me feel good, but having Tony behaving like a friend did, especially since I didn’t think that Tony would be acting that way without the tacit approval of the chief. If it turned out that I was guilty or there was enough evidence to arrest me, the chief would do it; but until then he was cutting me some unofficial slack by keeping me informed of what was going on.

  Olive Otero apparently was not so inclined. I wondered if Dom Agganis, the other state cop on the island, shared her suspicion. Dom and I had had a few testy moments, but we’d also gone fishing together, so it was hard to tell where he stood. He’d be fair, whatever happened, and that would have to satisfy me for now.

  The funeral procession had broken up. Some cars had turned toward West Tisbury, and others had headed up-island. I, recognized the last of the latter as Joe Begay’s big Dodge 4x4, and followed after it.

  At Beetlebung Corner, some cars turned toward Menemsha and North Road, but Joe Begay’s took a left and pulled into the parking lot in front of the Chilmark store. I pulled in beside him. Toni was in the passenger seat and Hanna was in her car seat. Joe got out and went up onto the covered porch. I waved at his wife and child, and climbed the steps and joined him.

  “Saw you tailing me,” he said. “Will it ruin my reputation to be seen in
public with a suspected killer?”

  “If you think so, I’ll just keep walking.”

  “Nah. Stick around. That article in the paper put your name on a lot of lips, though.”

  “Yeah. ’Deadly enemy of victim claims to have discovered corpse.’ Great.”

  “Well, they didn’t exactly go that far.”

  “No, not exactly.”

  The summer rain fell steadily, drumming softly on the roof. August rains like this one were lovely and pleasant, life givers, friends, washing away the stains of everyday living and making things bright and glowing and new. Other rains were cold and cruel, like enemies, or like ourselves sometimes. Or like whoever killed Lawrence Ingalls.

  I told Joe Begay what Tony D’Agostine had told me about the murder weapon, then went on: “The thing is that the only prints on the gun were mine and Beth Harper’s. Why weren’t there any of Ingalls’s prints on it?”

  “Probably because he cleaned his weapons after using them,” said Begay. “Some people do, you know.”

  “Beth Harper says he kept the gun in his bedside table. You think he would have wiped off every one of his fingerprints before putting it there? If it was me, I might clean the weapon after using it, but I’d never bother wiping the grips when I put it away.”

  “Not everybody’s a slob, J.W.”

  “Don’t give me a hard time. Would you have wiped the gun clean before putting it away beside your bed?”

  “I don’t keep a gun beside my bed. I don’t need one. I don’t have as many enemies as some people, I guess.”

  Actually, I thought that Joe Begay had probably collected more than one enemy during the twenty years he’d worked for whoever it was he had worked for doing whatever it was he did wherever it was he did it.