Vineyard Stalker

by Philip R. Craig

  About ten minutes later the Mercedes came past the farm and turned left toward West Tisbury. The car’s darkened windows prevented me from seeing the driver, but didn’t prevent him from seeing me if he was looking, which I imagined he was since I certainly would have been in his place.

  I pulled out after him but this time didn’t find him dawdling along in front of me. Instead, he’d apparently decided to take advantage of the fact that he had a Mercedes and I had an ancient, rusty Land Cruiser and had put the pedal to the metal. I saw his car disappearing over a far hill and by the time I got to the top of the same hill he was out of sight.

  There are a lot of side roads and driveways leading off that highway, including those leading to Oak Bluffs and into the county airport itself, and he could have taken any or none of them. My tailing skills were obviously not up to snuff and now I was paying the price. I mentally flipped a coin and drove on to West Tisbury on the off chance that he might be returning to the scene of the crime for some reason.

  But I didn’t find him near Roland Nunes’s place or anywhere else in the neighborhood. Unfortunately for me, even if I’d been right in following him that far, he might have taken any of the several roads leaving West Tisbury, including the three leading through Chilmark and the two you could follow back toward Vineyard Haven. I drove up Music Street, where I admired David McCullough’s white picket fence, then followed Panhandle Road around to Scotchman’s Lane where I took a right and then a left, and was headed back to Edgartown. Alas, the driver’s destination, wherever it was, was going to remain a secret from me for the time being, at least.

  Still, all had not been in vain. I had the Mercedes’ license plate number.

  In Edgartown I stopped at the police station where, as a bow to Homeland Security, you now had to punch a button to gain admittance through the front door. I punched and was admitted by Kit Goulart, who had not grown smaller since last I’d seen her. She was my height and outweighed me by several stone. I asked her if the chief was in and she allowed as how he was.

  I went to his office and tapped on the open door. He was sucking an empty pipe and looked up from a pile of papers.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “I already know that computers have created more paperwork than you had before they were invented and that you think you’ll move to Nova Scotia for the summer. Have you ever actually been to Nova Scotia?”

  He sat back. “We went up there one fall, in fact. Great place. Bright-colored houses and all the lobster you can eat. Bagpipes and fiddles. We loved it. Like the island was forty years ago. What are you doing here again? I just saw you yesterday. I thought you spent the summers either up there in the woods or out on East Beach.”

  “I need a favor,” I said.

  “I should have known. Something legal, I hope.”

  “I want to know who owns a white Mercedes sedan.” I gave him the license number.

  “This wouldn’t have to do with the business up in West Tisbury, would it? Naturally, you’re probably mixed up in that somehow.”

  I admitted as much and told him about Zee and the kids being gone and being bored and everything except the part about Roland Nunes’s desertion.

  Of course he picked up on that and eyed me over his pipe. “How come Carole Cohen didn’t want you to go to the police in the first place?”

  “You’ll have to ask Carole Cohen.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Would you believe client confidentiality? Anyway, the police are involved.”

  He snorted. “And so are you. You just can’t keep your nose in your own business. You know, about half of my work would end if two or three families would move off this island. Yours is one of them. Not because of Zee or the kids, just because of you. Wait here.” He got up and went out of the room.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the two-or-three-

  families statement, because it was almost as true for Edgartown as it was for most small towns: A few people from a few dysfunctional families caused half the grief in their communities, with trouble passed down from one generation to the next. The drunken father produces a drunken daughter; a son beats up his girlfriend and steals from his mother, and both women lie to the cops about who did it; the kid who drives his car too fast and kills his buddy when they hit a tree is the same kid who deals coke in the high school halls and has a baby or two in the junior class. When the police get called out to tend to trouble in any of its many forms, they’re rarely surprised by who they find at the scene.

  The chief came back into the office and tossed a piece of paper to me. I caught it in the air.

  “There,” he said. “Does that help?”

  The car had been rented in Boston by Frederick McMahan of Charlestown.

  Fred.

  “Do you know anything about this Fred McMahan?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you think you could find out?”

  “I could if I had some time to waste, which I don’t. Maybe your reporter pal on the Globe can help you out. Anyway, you should be dealing with the West Tisbury cops, not me. That’s where you got in trouble and the Carson woman was killed.”

  “I think this is one of the guys who put that stun-gun shot into me. If that was him making the phone threat I told you about, he may use a real one the next time.”

  The phone threat had come to someone in his town, which made it his business. He chewed his pipe stem and I knew he wished he was still puffing tobacco, because years after giving up the weed I, too, sometimes still had an urge to stoke up my corncob.

  “I’ll see what I can learn,” he said finally.

  “While you’re at it, see if he’s tied to the guy called Angie. And maybe you could spread the word about that Mercedes. We have ten police forces on this little island and one of their minions might see it somewhere and have a chat with the driver.”

  “Anything else you want to tell me to do that I was going to do anyway?” asked the chief. “If not, good-bye.” As I left, he added, “Be careful.”

  I drove back to Oak Bluffs and checked the parking lot behind the Noepe Hotel. The Hummer was gone but the VW and the pickup were there along with a couple of cars I hadn’t seen before. The clerk and the cleaning lady were still at work and they had some new customers to deal with. I was sorry I hadn’t written down the Hummer’s license plate number and compensated by writing down those of the two new cars in the lot. Maybe Fred had imported a couple of friends to help him.

  I was conscious of time flowing past. Zee would be home in a few days and I wanted this business over and done with before she and the children came on the scene. Not for the first time I felt that having a house and family was, like love itself, not only the greatest of blessings but the greatest of dangers.

  I glanced at my watch, got back in the truck, and drove to West Tisbury.

  15

  When I knocked on Babs Carson’s door, Robert Chadwick answered, filling the doorway with his body. I thought, from the look on his face, that he was exhausted and unsure whether or not to let me come in.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  “Devastated, of course.”

  “I’d like to talk with her.”

  “Well…” He wasn’t sure it was his place to defend her gates.

  I empathized with him. “You’re wearing yourself out emotionally,” I said. “She’s a strong woman and she’ll be all right eventually, but right now you need to keep your own energy up so you can help her past this hard place she’s in.”

  He took a deep breath. “Grief wears you out,” he said. “So does trying to help but not really being able to do it. I’m afraid I’m not very good at being soothing.”

  “I think you’re probably what she needs right now,” I said. “Does she have any woman friends? Maybe you should have one of them come over, too.”

  “I’ve asked her if she wants that. She just shook her head.”

  “I’ll come back later if I can’t see her now,” I s
aid. “But the colder a trail gets, the harder it is to follow. I want to know about the men in Melissa’s life.”

  His big body still blocked the doorway. “The police have already been here. Babs answered all their questions.”

  “They won’t be telling me what they learned,” I said. “I’m too involved in this prowler business to walk away and do nothing, and I liked Melissa enough to want to catch her killer. Babs is my best bet to learn about her daughter’s past.”

  He thought for a moment, then stepped back and let me in. He led me to a studio attached to the rear of the building, where Babs Carson was sitting in a tall chair in front of a painting of bright flowers, dabbing at the canvas now and then with a thin brush. She wore a long, paint-stained apron.

  The easel was set up in what was obviously a potter’s studio, and I wondered if it was significant that Babs was painting instead of potting. Was she avoiding her life’s work, just as she was avoiding thoughts of her daughter’s death?

  She looked at me with indifference, and I had the impression that nothing really interested her, not even the painting in front of her.

  “You remember Mr. Jackson,” said Chadwick.

  “Of course. You were here just the other day.”

  “Yes. I met your daughter, too. I was very sorry to learn of her death.”

  She nodded, and touched her brush to her canvas. “Yes. Thank you.”

  “I liked her.”

  “I loved her.”

  “I don’t mean to be intrusive, but I want to ask you about the men in her life.”

  “I told the police everything I know, which isn’t a lot, really. Melissa enjoyed shocking people, but she really wasn’t one to entertain with intimate stories of her affairs.”

  “You implied that she’d been married more than once, and that she led an active social life,” I said. “It’s not unusual for an abandoned lover or spouse to want to harm his ex-wife or mistress. Did any of Melissa’s men ever say or do anything to suggest that he was going to get even for being abandoned?”

  Her voice was weary. “The police asked the same questions and I told them no. My daughter was married three times, but the last divorce was almost four years ago. She kept on good terms with all of her exes, curiously enough. In fact, she got along with them better after their divorces than before. I’ve heard that’s not unusual. People can be good friends as long as they’re not married to one another.”

  My first wife had divorced me because she couldn’t stand the tension of being a policeman’s wife, ever fearful that her husband might be shot. Now, years later, some of the love we’d felt for one another during our marriage still lingered even though we’d both remarried and begun new lives.

  “Was she on good terms with her ex-lovers, as well?” I asked.

  “I know less about them. She brought some men to the house to meet me, and I found some of them clever and entertaining, but not most. She liked personable men and so do I, so I hit it off with those quite well.” She paused. “Of course there were a lot I didn’t care for, such as Alfred Cabot, for example, but she usually shed them fairly quickly. I wondered sometimes if she wasn’t using me as a measuring rod. You know, as a test of her judgment. If Mother didn’t approve, daughter would find a new man. Melissa never admitted to such a thing, of course, but that’s how it sometimes seemed to me.” She studied her painting, then wiped her brush, dipped it in a bit of yellow on her palette, and touched it to her canvas.

  I said, “But even if you approved, she didn’t keep the latest man on her string.”

  “No, it was more as though my approval didn’t guarantee a long relationship, but my disapproval guaranteed a short one.”

  “But when I was here, she was wearing an engagement ring, and it was my impression that you didn’t care for the man who’d given it to her.”

  “Alfred Cabot? Your impression was correct. Alfred is a money man. He was born with it, he studied how to make more of it, he makes it, and he plans to continue making it, although he’ll never be able to spend what he already has. I consider him a complete blah.”

  “Why do you suppose Melissa agreed to marry him?”

  “I simply can’t imagine.” Babs looked directly at me. “Anyway, as you know, being engaged to Alfred didn’t inhibit Melissa from pursuing other men such as yourself and Mr. Nunes. I personally believe that the engagement wasn’t going to last, and that was fine by me.”

  “Maybe it was his money.”

  She shook her head. “No. She had all the money she needed. A trust fund. She didn’t have to work, although I believe she’d have been happier if she had.” She looked at her canvas. “People need to work at something, I think.”

  “Some people never have enough money.”

  “That would be Alfred Cabot, not Melissa.”

  “Do you know if Cabot is on the island right now?”

  Her tired eyes seemed to brighten. “No. Why?”

  “Do you know what kind of car he drives?”

  “I don’t know what you call them. One of those big, square things that take up most of the road.”

  “A Hummer?”

  “That’s it. I understand they’re very fashionable, although I can’t see why. Maybe it’s another one of those conspicuous consumption items that you buy so people will know that you’re rich. Alfred likes being rich and he likes to have people know that he is. Money and the things it will buy are his standards of success.”

  “Maybe he thought of Melissa as a trophy.”

  “I can understand him wanting her; I can’t understand her wanting him. My best guess is that it was just her private joke.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She studied her painting. “He’s a man who uses people to make money and thinks that money will buy him what he wants, which it usually does. I thought that she might have decided to play with him the way he plays with other people, to use him the way he uses them. To let him think he was buying her, too, and then to drop him for someone without any money. It would have amused her.”

  “For someone like Roland Nunes?”

  She shrugged. “Or you, although she gave up that idea faster than I thought she would. She usually didn’t pay much attention to men’s wedding rings.”

  “Were there angry wives?”

  “I wouldn’t know. If so, Melissa never mentioned them. I suspect that when she handed their husbands back, the wives were no longer interested in her.” She smiled a strange smile. “You attracted her but she seemed to know very quickly that you weren’t available. It was unusual for her to admit defeat so rapidly.”

  I could see Melissa in my mind and felt again the affection I’d had for her in spite of, or possibly because of, her cheerful hedonism. “I found her very attractive,” I said, “but I’m very married. Can you think of anyone at all who might have wished your daughter harm?”

  She shook her head and her eyes grew empty as her brief energy left her. “I cannot.”

  She sat there like a gray ghost, staring sightlessly at the painting in front of her.

  Robert Chadwick moved into my vision. “I think that’s enough for now, Mr. Jackson.”

  I thanked her for her time, but got no response before I followed Chadwick out of the room. At the front door, I stopped and said, “You know something about Melissa. Do you agree with her mother’s assessment of her husbands and lovers and the lovers’ wives? Were they all so benign? So lacking in anger when she moved on to her next conquest?”

  “I don’t know,” he said with a frown. “But there is one thing I do know that I’ve already told the police and that may interest you as well. The night she died, after I watched the news, I took a nightcap out to the patio. While I was sitting there, enjoying the air, I heard voices on the other side of my wall. Male and female voices, arguing. I couldn’t make out the words, but there was no doubt about the tone. The argument went on for a good five minutes, then seemed to stop. I thought it was over, but a few minutes later it start
ed again. The voices weren’t really loud, but they were bitter; it was as though both of them were trying to keep from attracting attention. I thought about going over to the wall and telling them to go somewhere else before they woke up the rest of the neighbors, but then the argument stopped again.” He paused. “The next morning they found Melissa’s body right about where I’d heard the voices. I think I may have heard the murderer speaking just before he killed her.”

  “What did the police have to say when you told them what you’d heard?”

  “They wanted to know about the exact time and what was said and they wanted me to describe the voices, but I couldn’t do any of that. They asked me to try to remember and to tell them anything that I can recall, but I can recall nothing. Angry voices, bitter laughter. That’s all I remember.”

  “Something may come back to you. If it does, even if it seems insignificant, tell the police. I’d like to know, too.”

  “All right, but I’m getting old and my ears and my memory aren’t as good as they used to be.” He glanced back toward the studio. “I’d better be getting back. I don’t want Babs to be alone.”

  I went to my car, hoping that Chadwick’s friendship would be a comfort to Babs in the long loneliness that follows the death of a child. I couldn’t imagine ever recovering from the death of one of mine.

  I drove the short distance to the place where Melissa’s body had been found, parked outside the yellow police tape that still surrounded the spot, and walked down the ancient way to Roland Nunes’s house. He and his moped were gone, probably to work, since the world continues to turn after a murder just as it did before.

  The site was peaceful and serene, showing no sign of new intrusions. I went into the unlocked house and began a search, looking for anything that might give me a clue about possible enemies or aspects of his or her character that had eluded me so far.

  I found nothing helpful to me. No revelatory letters, no enigmatic possessions, no remembrances of things past. Only a few books, a small ivory Buddha, a string of wooden prayer beads, clothing, and utensils for cooking and eating. The double cot still smelled faintly of lavender. Aside from that, Nunes’s home was as simple and unadorned as the man himself. He was what he appeared to be: almost a monk. Except, of course, for his involvement with Melissa.