He didn’t like the shield but he was also afraid of it. I felt again like a bully, but stood my ground.
“You stay,” he said and went away. I heard the murmur of voices; then he came back with Delia, whose face was full of worry.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said. I showed her the photo of the Mini Cooper. “Have you seen a car like this one in the hotel parking lot?”
She studied the photo and then nodded. “Sim. Yes, I have seen a car like that.”
“Have you seen it often?”
She shrugged a small shrug. “Sometimes. I do not count the times.”
“Two more questions, and I’ll go. Was this car ever there when Senhor Cabot was not there?”
She took her lower lip in her teeth and flashed a look at the man. “I don’t want trouble, senhor.”
“You’re not in trouble.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Only the truth.”
She pushed the photo at me. “O.K. I think this car comes only when Senhor Cabot was there.”
“Did you ever see the driver of this car?”
She shook her dark-haired head. “No. I never see him. Never.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I won’t bother you again. Go back to sleep.”
I sat in the truck remembering seeing a Mini Cooper at Alfred Cabot’s place in Aquinnah and was sure that Sally Oliver was lying about only having met Cabot casually. They were more than casual acquaintances; the question was, How much more? Were they lovers? Business partners? Both? Neither? A combination of the two? Who would know?
Martha’s Vineyard Hospital is one of the island’s major recyclers of gossip, but my main contact there, Zee, was out of town, so that source had to be scratched. I thought of everyone I’d encountered since I’d first become involved with Roland Nunes’s problems and could think of no one who could tell me what I wanted to know, with the exceptions of Cabot and Sally Oliver themselves and, possibly, Fred McMahan and Angie Vinci, and none of them was going to talk to me.
I thought of Cabot’s guard, who’d come up to the fence on his ATV. Maybe if I took his shotgun away from him and threatened to shoot him with it if he didn’t talk, he could tell me something about Al and Sal. The servants always know the family secrets, it’s said. If I was in a movie, I might be able to pull that off, but I was in real life, so I didn’t pick up the option.
Who, then?
There were only a couple of people I could think of who might know: Babs Carson and Roland Nunes.
I drove to West Tisbury. I had done so much driving lately that I was single-handedly keeping the gasoline companies in business.
23
Robert Chadwick opened the door of Babs Carson’s house and looked at me with tired eyes.
“You were here earlier. Must you bother her again?”
“Maybe not, if you can tell me something.”
He stepped out and pulled the door mostly shut behind him. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Why don’t you leave everything to the police? Why are you still at it?”
It was a fair question, but I ignored it. I was so involved now that I couldn’t become uninvolved. “I want to know whether Sally Oliver and Alfred Cabot have more than a business relationship. Melissa mentioned Cabot having a mistress, but she didn’t mention the woman’s name. Do you know if it’s Sally Oliver?”
His mouth hardened. “I don’t like spreading gossip.”
I said, “If you don’t tell me, I’ll have to ask Babs. If you try to prevent me from doing that, I’ll go to the police and they’ll ask the same question.”
“Do you always deal in scandal?” He leaned toward me and his voice was angry and touched with contempt. “I thought more of you when we first met.”
“I’m dealing with murder and vandalism,” I said, “and crime is a dirty business. You’re an educated man. You know that.”
He hesitated, then sighed and straightened as the fire slowly went out of his eyes. “You’re right about crime, of course. I apologize for my outburst. When I was teaching I prided myself on my objectivity. But this business has brought my emotions to the forefront.”
I nodded. “Of course your feelings are powerful. It’s because of your concern for Mrs. Carson. She’s fortunate to have you for a friend.”
“I wish I could do more for her.”
“You may be doing something for her by telling me if Alfred Cabot and Sally Oliver are lovers. Do you know if they are?”
He still hedged, reluctant to be a rumor monger. “What difference could it make?”
“Sally Oliver told me she doesn’t know Cabot well. I think she was lying, but I’d like to know for sure.”
He rubbed his bald head. “She told you that, did she? Well, I was once here when Melissa told her mother that Sally had been Cabot’s mistress for some time. You know how Melissa talked about such things. She told Babs that it didn’t make any difference to her if Cabot had a mistress because she didn’t plan on giving up her own lovers just because she and Cabot were engaged and might even get married.”
That sounded like Melissa to me. I said, “The only time I talked with Melissa, she seemed more interested in Roland Nunes than in Alfred Cabot.”
He nodded. “Yes, life was like a game to her. Sex was fun and her rules allowed for a lot of it, with no hard feelings when the game pieces moved on. It’s not the way I’ve lived or would want to live, but it was her way and I could never bring myself to condemn her for it. I liked her. She had more of the élan vital than most of us do.”
I nodded agreement. “You’ve told me what I wanted to know. Go back and stay with Babs.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I have to talk with some people.”
“Do you think they’ll ever learn who killed Melissa?”
Statistically, the odds of solving murders aren’t too good, but I said, “I think so. I think the noose is tightening.”
His smile was sardonic. “I hope that’s an appropriate metaphor.”
I drove back to the murder site and walked down to Roland Nunes’s house. He wasn’t home. The only indication that a woman had been in his house was that faint scent of perfume on the double cot. Back at the paved road I looked across at the narrow trace that was all that remained on that side of the road of the ancient way that led through Nunes’s property.
I crossed and walked along that track between the oak brush and small pines that were crowding it from either side. It was about the same width as the path leading to Nunes’s house. It ended, as Carole Cohen had told me, in a small clearing beyond which was another of those gates that increasingly cut off access to the ancient ways.
Bent grass showed where some sort of traffic—a motorcycle, perhaps? a small car?—had passed in and out again, and I wondered if this hidden spot was a place where teenaged lovers escaped from their parents’ world while they tried to discover their own.
I walked back out to the truck and drove to the building site overlooking Menemsha Pond. Nunes was working there as calmly, it seemed, as if nothing unusual had happened in his entire life. When I reached him, though, I sensed that his face was bland through an act of will; that his eyes only appeared to be beatific; that his movements were under steely control.
He put down the air-powered nail gun he was using and pulled the hearing protectors from his ears.
“J.W. What brings you here?”
I sat on my heels beside him. “Did Melissa ever mention any enemies while she was with you?”
His voice was leaden. “Never.”
“Did she ever talk about Alfred Cabot or Sally Oliver?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say about them?
“She said they were lovers.”
“She was engaged to Cabot. Did she tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you were lovers. Did she plan to leave Cabot?”
“She never said so.”
“What
did you want her to do?”
“I wanted her to be happy.” There was no expression in his face or voice.
“Do you think she was considering leaving Cabot?”
“What does a man know of a woman’s thoughts?”
“What did you think?”
“I thought she was beautiful and desirable.”
“Did she want to marry you?”
“I wanted to marry her.”
“Did she accept your proposal?”
“No.”
“Did she refuse you?”
“No.” He paused. “She only laughed and kissed me.”
“Did you believe that she would later say yes?”
“I neither believed nor disbelieved. I only cherished her.”
I looked out over Menemsha Pond. There were boats, power and sail, crossing the water. To my right I could see Menemsha Bight, and beyond that, across Vineyard Sound, the small island of Cuttyhunk where thirty or so hardy souls lived year-round and were happy when the summer tourists went away in the fall.
“They call you the Monk,” I said, “but you’ve not lived a totally spiritual life, have you?”
“No. I’ve tried to live simply and so as not to injure others, but I’ve not managed that, and I’ve achieved no cessation of desire.”
“Has your life been an atonement?”
“I wanted it to be. When I was a young man I did much harm. I didn’t want to do more.”
“Have you found peace?”
His answer came late. “No. I knew I would make a very poor monk. My best hope was to be a harmless man, but I’m not.”
“Why do you say that?”
His eyes pulled at me. “I know that death means nothing and that we should accept it when others cause it or we cause it, but I can’t.” I saw one of his hands squeeze into a fist before he too noticed it and willed it back into a hand. He saw that I had seen the fist and nodded slightly. “My life has been a failure. I can’t be what I know I should be.”
“No one can be what he knows he should be,” I said. “Would you have married her?”
He nodded slowly. “Oh yes, but I would have made a poor husband. My wife could never be sure that the police wouldn’t come knocking at my door.”
“Have you considered turning yourself in to the army? I’m sure you could survive any penalty they might impose, and then you’d be free.”
“Perhaps I’d get out of jail, but Melissa is dead, and now I have to decide what to do with myself.” His eyes were staring at nothing. “I’m hollow. I have a headpiece full of straw. My life is a whimper.”
I looked into those eyes and saw emptiness. “You’re not thinking of harming someone, are you?” I asked.
His face was unfathomable. “Who would I harm but myself, and what would be the harm in that?”
“You’ve spent your life atoning for the harm you did during war,” I said.
“Do you know the story of the saint and the cobra?” he asked. “The cobra was trapped by rising floodwaters, and the saint took pity on him and carried him to safety. When they reached high ground, the cobra struck him fatally. The dying saint was astonished. ‘Why have you killed me?’ he asked. ‘I just saved your life.’ ‘You cannot help being a saint,’ said the cobra, ‘and I cannot help being a cobra.’ ”
I’d heard variations of that tale before, but they had been told in tones unlike his. “I think you have a choice,” I said. “Your life proves that you have.”
He said nothing. I thought I saw a tear form, but he wiped it away. His despair was tangible. He had spent his life climbing out of the Void, but was now back in it. I was familiar with the place.
“I don’t want to rehash Philosophy 101,” I said, “but even if life has no meaning, you can create it. You can live and be happy.”
He picked up the nail gun, pointed it at a beam, and pulled the trigger. The nail buried itself in the wood.
“I was happy a week ago,” he said. He lifted the gun and nodded toward the embedded nail. “These are wonderful tools, but people get killed with them fairly often, usually because they’re careless. Right now I have to concentrate all the time to avoid being careless. It takes all of my energy.”
I tried to move us both away from his despair. “Melissa never mentioned anyone who was angry with her?”
“Only one. Alfred Cabot. She said he was unhappy when she told him she was seeing me. She thought it was comical. She thought a lot of things were comical.” His eyes became hooded.
I had a sense of what he must have been like in Vietnam: tough, wary, centered, lonely.
“What did Melissa say about Sally Oliver?”
“She said Sally should get a life of her own and stop playing second fiddle in Cabot’s. According to Melissa, Sally was his mistress during both of Cabot’s marriages and still is.”
“Did Melissa see her as a rival?”
“Melissa never worried about rivals. She laughed at them.”
“What do you think of Sally?”
He shrugged. “She’s my cousin. Like they say, you can choose your friends, but not your relatives. I know she wants me to agree to leave our land. Maybe I will, if I decide to turn myself in to the army. I won’t need the land if I’m in jail.”
“I don’t think you’ll be in jail very long, if at all. Why do you dislike your cousin?”
“She likes people too little and money too much. Like me, she has too much temper.”
“She can be charming when she wants to be.”
“Truly charming people don’t turn their charm on and off. She does.” He made a small gesture. “I shouldn’t be criticizing her. I’m worse than she is.”
“Is she cruel?”
“Everyone is cruel.”
“Is she vindictive?”
He shrugged. “She’s been spiteful to me ever since she learned that I planned to keep this land, but her spite just made me dig in my heels. Maybe if she’d been more loving, I’d have given in.” He looked at me from the corner of his eye. “I’m a fool for love, after all.”
“Don’t berate yourself for being susceptible to love,” I said. I was not good at giving love, but I knew its value. My wife and children were worth more to me than the universe.
I stood up. “Don’t do anything rash. I’ll see you later.” I walked away and after a few moments I heard the sound of his nail gun as he went back to work.
24
I sat in the truck and thought back over what I’d seen and heard during the past six days. I felt tired but forced myself to regroup and drove to the Noepe Hotel. No Hummer or Mini Cooper was in the parking lot. I considered having another talk with the desk clerk, but had no reason to think she’s be less close-lipped than before and I lacked the energy to assault her professional wall of silence about the hotel and its guests. Instead, I drove home.
The house seemed to echo with emptiness broken only by insistent meowed requests for their evening treats by Oliver Underfoot and Velcro. I fed them and poured myself a double vodka on the rocks adorned with two jalapeño-stuffed green olives. I took the glass and a tray of crackers and bluefish pâté up to the balcony, and sat and sipped and nibbled, looking out across the garden to Sengekontacket Pond, where a flotilla of swans was sailing by.
Tomorrow, almost exactly twenty-four hours from now, Zee and the kids would be home. To half of my psyche it seemed an eternity, and to the other half no time at all. I needed to finish preparations for their homecoming supper.
On the barrier beach between the pond and Nantucket Sound a few cars lingered so their occupants could enjoy the last warm rays of the evening sun, and out on the sound boats were moving toward harbor. At the horizon, the dark blue sea met the blue-white evening sky and between them I could just see the dancing line that was the south side of Cape Cod.
I wondered whether Alfred Cabot was besotted with Sally Oliver or she was besotted with him. Or were they besotted with each other? Or was their relationship only a comfortable habit, with
neither of them motivated by passion?
Although they didn’t seem the types to become infatuated, unexpected fervors often pop up where you least expect them. I recalled the eminently respectable professor in Boston whose bland public life included a wife and children and regular church attendance, but whose secret life eventually led him to murder the prostitute upon whom he had squandered his life savings in thousand-dollar increments he called “grand days.”
I thought, too, of the cases of the powerful men, high in civic, financial, and governmental circles, who, when I was a Boston cop, had been discovered in diapers or less, having paid well to be whipped and humiliated by professionals in the sex trade.
As Fats said, “One never knows, do one?”
Whatever the quality of passion in their relationship, Cabot and Sally Oliver had presumably been man and mistress for a long time, so they were of value to one another. I wondered how much influence each held over the other. Clearly Sally didn’t have enough to prevent Alfred from planning marriage with Melissa, but maybe Alfred’s marriages made no difference to her; maybe she preferred her role as mistress and was indifferent to Alfred’s wives. Clearly, too, Alfred had no intention of sacrificing marriage for Sally’s sake or vice versa. Like many men, he apparently saw no need to choose between wife and girlfriend, since he probably thought of them as having little to do with one another.
Perhaps, however, his first two wives had disagreed with this generous view, since both had left him. Or maybe they had just been late in learning what Babs Carson and Melissa knew early: that Alfred was a blah.
The next morning dawned bright and sultry. No one would be up and around yet, so I filled the bird feeders, deadheaded some flowers, and prepared myself a full bloat breakfast: juice, coffee, bacon, eggs, and buttered toast. My arteries groaned but my taste buds danced a gleeful jig.
At nine o’clock I drove into Edgartown and, it being too early for most tourists to be abroad, immediately found a parking place not far from Prada Real Estate. I walked there and was gratified to see the Mini Cooper sitting in its accustomed place. I crossed the parking lot and examined it. Sally Oliver had a cute car but she didn’t take very good care of it. There were small scratches in the paint on both sides. Nothing serious, but enough to make a true Mini Cooper fan wince.
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