A Case of Vineyard Poison

by Philip R. Craig

  Another beautiful night on the beautiful island of Martha’s Vineyard.

  Later, my arm around sleeping Zee, I found myself again thinking of Katherine Ellis. It was the wrong time for such thoughts, and I was awake for longer than I wanted to be.

  — 9 —

  At five o’clock the next morning, we were at Wasque Point nailing the blues as the sky was brightening over Nantucket. The fish were only three quarters of a cast out, and were hitting about every other throw. They seemed to prefer poppers, so that’s what we were giving them. There were three other trucks between Wasque and Leland’s, and everybody was doing well. By the time the sun climbed up out of the water, we had a lot of fish under the truck. I was taking a coffee break and listening to the classical station over on the Cape when Dave came up from the surf with another nice nine-pounder. I watched as he unhooked the fish and tossed it under the truck with the others.

  He clenched and unclenched his fingers and rubbed his arm. “Man, this is great, but it can wear you out.”

  “It’s always a problem. Should you hang in there and kill yourself to get your limit while the fish are still hitting, or take a break and hope they’ll still be there after you rest up?”

  There was a narrow band of clouds just above the horizon, and the sun was rising behind them. The clouds were shot with fire. I pointed out the tiny irregularity on the horizon that was Muskeget, the little island off the western tip of Nantucket.

  “Ah,” he said. “Nantucket. Whales, Captain Ahab, and like that. A nice island, but a lot different than this one. Not so many trees, for one thing. Low and gray, but beautiful. I was out there a couple of years ago. Just for part of a day. Flew in, took a bus tour, walked around town, and flew back to Boston.”

  That was more than I could say.’ My father had first pointed out Muskeget to me when I was five years old, but I had never made it to Nantucket. Hawaii, Japan, and Vietnam, yes; Nantucket, no. Next month, though, I’d make a visit. With Zee, aboard the Shirley J., on our honeymoon. That was a nice thought, so I held it while I finished my coffee.

  By that time, the weekend four-by-fours were streaming in from the west, and Wasque was getting crowded. I went down and got another fish, then came back and started loading blues into the fish boxes. All told, we had almost thirty fish, mostly eight- to ten-pounders. A very nice haul. I put my rod on the roof rack and poured another coffee. On the radio, they were playing something baroque. Not Bach, but somebody else. Who? Telemann? Vivaldi? Somebody in a cheerful mood, at any rate.

  Zee saw my rod go on the rack and made one more cast. About halfway in, a fish started following her lure, swirling and snapping at it, but missing again and again. I could see her laughing as she slowed her reel, then speeded it, then slowed it again so that the fish could have a lot of chances. After you’ve gotten enough fish, it’s more fun, sometimes, to have one chase you and miss than to catch him. This one tried once too often, and hit the lure just outside of the breakers. An easy victim. Zee only had to haul him in about thirty feet to land him.

  When she got up to the truck, she was happy.

  “What could be better? A beautiful morning, and lots offish!”

  “Get some more, if you want.”

  She looked at the trucks gathering along the beach and at the others still coming.

  “No. Zoo time is about to start. We have plenty offish. Let’s head for home. You have a market for these?”

  “I’ll give a few away, and sell the rest. I’ll take you all home first.”

  “I love you,” she said, standing on her toes and giving me a kiss.

  “I love you, too,” I said, and kissed her back.

  Quinn and Dave came up from the surf. “Shameless, both of you,” said Quinn.

  “Time to go,” said Zee. “It’ll be wall-to-wall fishermen here in a little while.”

  Once we cleared Chappy, we drove west along the outside of the dunes, throwing our shortening shadow in front of us. It was early, and the beach was empty of people. Twenty miles ahead of us, we could see the distant bend of land that marked Gay Head, the far end of the island. The sky was still without much color, and the ocean stretched away to the horizon on our left. It was a lonely and lovely place to be.

  Just before reaching the paved road, I cut over to the Herring Creek, and scaled and gutted the half dozen fish I planned to give away.

  In town, I stopped at the Midway Market for a Sunday Globe, then went on. At home, I unloaded everyone else, then drove back downtown and sold all of my fish except the ones I’d cleaned. The price wasn’t too good, because there were a lot of blues around, but I didn’t care, since that was what I had expected. I delivered the cleaned fish to four widows and two old couples who liked bluefish but couldn’t catch their own anymore, and headed home.

  It was turning into a beautiful day, and I felt lazy and good, the way you do after a successful early morning fishing trip. I had made some money and hadn’t had to fillet a single fish. I was in high cotton, as they say down South. Happy as a clam at high tide, as they say up North.

  When I got to the house, I found Dave sleeping in a lounge chair in the yard, under my big umbrella, and Quinn nodding off on the couch on the screened porch. Quinn got one eye open long enough to register my arrival and to grunt, then floated back to oblivion.

  Zee looked up from the crossword puzzle and put a finger to her lips. “It’s good for them,” she whispered. “They can both use as much rest as they can get.”

  Some people on vacation feel guilty about going to sleep because they’re afraid they’re wasting their money or their time. I prefer the wisdom of some sage I once read about who was quoted as saying that the only difference between a Zen master and anybody else was that the Zen master ate when he was hungry and slept when he was tired. A wise bit of advice, and one that a lot of nonhuman animals seem to take to heart. They don’t wait until a certain time of day to eat or a certain time of night to sleep. Instead, they follow the path of the Zen master. Babies are the same way, but adults are not. Down we forget as up we grow, as the poet observed.

  So I approved of my guests snoozing, and took advantage of it to read the Sunday paper.

  You can probably skip a couple years’ worth of Sunday papers and not miss a whole lot, since the news is mostly the same. The Red Sox, weak down the middle as usual, and with a shaky pitching staff as usual, were still in the thick of things, as usual. Baseball is a wonderful game because over the years the very best teams just barely win more than they lose, and the very worst teams barely lose more than they win. Thus, your team always has a real chance. Unless your team is the Cubs, of course.

  The Arts and Entertainment pages do change as new shows come into town and old ones leave, but since I rarely go to shows, that news is usually of no great interest to me. Today, the item noting that pianist David Greenstein was still incommunicado did catch my eye, in part because its writer raised the questions of just where Greenstein might be and why was he there instead of performing, as he was supposed to be doing. Reporters are a suspicious lot, and this one, while not really saying that anything was out of whack, was suggesting that maybe it was. I thought that Dave might have a lot of explaining to do when he got back to civilization.

  On the other hand, looking at him sleeping in the morning sun, totally unwound, one arm hanging down so that his fingers touched the lawn, I thought that this escape of his was probably exactly what he needed, whether or not he would eventually have to face a hostile press or public. There was something childlike about him as he slept, something innocent and pure. I had seen that same look on Zee’s face as she slept, but I had not noted it on a man’s face since those faraway and long ago days when young comrades in Vietnam had managed to nap between the cries of havoc and the howling of the dogs of war.

  Zee put down her puzzle and came to me.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” she whispered.

  I got our crooked walking sticks. Mine was cut long ago when my fa
ther and I had a who-can-cut-the-crookedest-walking-stick contest, which I had won by dint of a wonderfully serpentine oak branch that I shaped into a perfectly bent and twisted cane. After that day, I did not take walks without my crooked stick, and I had lately shaped another one for Zee, which was crooked indeed, and crooked enough, though not so crooked as my own.

  Crooked sticks in hand, we left bur sleeping guests and started through the oak brush toward the Felix Neck. Wildlife Sanctuary. An old deer trail led northwest through the trees behind my house. After winding over my land and other people’s land, it finally hooked up with the road leading into Felix Neck. It was a good trail for single-file walking, and allowed us to avoid most of the poison ivy and thorns that grow in those woods.

  When we got to the Felix Neck road, we could walk side by side at last, and talk as we walked,. We headed down toward the barn, then walked back out to the highway and down the bicycle path toward my driveway.

  “You know,” said Zee, “next weekend is the last weekend I’ll get to spend with you until after we get married.”

  “Because of Mom?”

  “Yes, because of Mom. She’ll be coming down a few days early to help me with everything, and she’ll be staying with me, so I have to live at home.”

  “And Dad and your brothers?”

  “Yes, they’ll be coming down, and my sisters-in-law, too. But only a day or so before the wedding, because they all have to get back to work.”

  “The whole family. All of the Muletos of Fall River. I’ll finally meet the gang.”

  “I probably should have taken you home and introduced you. But they’ll like you, I know.”

  “Naturally. Everybody likes me. I’m a likable guy.” But I wasn’t a doctor, like Zee’s first husband, with whom, Zee had once told me, her mother, unlike Zee, still got along very well.

  “And I hope you’ll like them,” said Zee.

  “I hope so, too. But I’m marrying you, not your family.”

  “Maybe so, but take a good look at my mother before the big day, because they say that the woman you marry will end up looking like her mother.”

  “Your mother must be a great beauty, then.”

  She hooked my arm with hers and pulled us together. “What a silver tongue. I’m sure Mom will be as charmed as I am.”

  “Did I ever tell you that before I changed the names out of sheer modesty, J.W. stood for Just Wonderful.”

  She let go of my arm, and whacked at my stick with hers. “Thank goodness I still have time to change my mind about this wedding!”

  “I still plan to show up.” We strolled on. “What’ll we do if it rains?”

  “If it rains, we’ll just move inside John’s house. It’s big enough for everybody. There aren’t going to be that many people.”

  I thought about John and Mattie Skye’s big old farmhouse. We could probably get everybody in the library. Then I started counting heads: Zee and six other Muletos, me, my sister from Santa Fe and her husband; that was ten; the minister, John and Mattie and the twins; that made fifteen. Hmmmm. Then there was Aunt Amelia Muleto, and there were Manny and Helen Fonseca, the chief and his wife, Tony D’Agostine and his wife, George and Margo Martin, and Hazel Fine and Mary Coffin and the other musicians. Good grief. Our little wedding was getting huge.

  I glanced at Zee. “Do you know how many people are coming?”

  “Probably no more than fifty, all told.”

  “I didn’t know I knew fifty people. Am I supposed to be doing much to get things ready? If I am, I haven’t heard about it.”

  “You just get the Shirley J. ready to sail, and make sure you have your getting married clothes rented, and have the ring, and have your best man . . .”

  “John is going to be my best man.”

  “I know. And Mattie is my matron of honor, so it’ll all be in their family.”

  “I think we’d better burn incense or something to persuade the rain gods to go somewhere else for the day.”

  “I thought you were supposed to sacrifice a virgin.”

  “Did you ever try to find a virgin on Martha’s Vineyard in the summertime?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Zee. “It’s going to be a perfect day for a perfect wedding.”

  “For perfect us.”

  “That’s perfectly right!”

  “And you can get everything ready in just three weeks?”

  “There’ll be Mom and me and Mattie Skye and probably some other people working at it. We’ll get it done.”

  “Zeolinda Jackson,” I said. “It has a nice ring to it.”

  She grabbed my arm again. “Yes, it does!”

  We walked along the bike path and turned down my driveway. I showed Zee the place where Katherine Ellis’s moped had fallen. Although a lot of feet had walked over the sand since that day, some of Kathy’s staggering footprints could still be seen. When we got to the spot where she had died, we paused.

  I wondered if I’d have had the character to make it so far before I died.

  “Look,” said Zee, pointing.

  I could see a bit of paper beneath a blueberry bush. I walked over and saw that it was the corner of an envelope mostly covered by leaves. I picked it up and looked at it. It was a Vineyard Haven National Bank envelope, and it had been slit open. Inside I found Kathy Ellis’s bank statement and her returned checks.

  She had a balance of $750.34. Pretty good for a Vineyard summer worker in June. Most college kids working on the island were lucky to break even by the time they had to go back to school.

  What was really interesting was that during the past month Kathy had made out eleven checks to cash for nine thousand dollars each, and another for one thousand dollars even. That added up to a nice round one hundred thousand dollars, which was really good for a Vineyard summer worker in June.

  — 10 —

  I handed the envelope and its contents to Zee. She looked at them.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I think that one hundred thousand dollars is a popular number lately. Where does a college student get a hundred thousand dollars?”

  “Maybe she was faster on the uptake than you were, and when the computer glitched and put a hundred thou in her account, she took it out before the glitch could be corrected.”

  “Maybe she was rich.” She put the checks and the statement back in the envelope.

  “Nah. Rich girls have straight blond hair that comes to their shoulders, and they walk like they’re carrying hockey sticks.”

  “Good grief. Here.” She handed me the envelope.

  “The way I see it, Cash ended up being the rich person. Good old Cash. Let’s see if he got it all or if several people got nine thou apiece.”

  I took out the checks and looked at the endorsements. They had all been deposited in the Zimmerman National Bank in Hyannis by a Cecil Jones for the New Bedford, Woods Hole and Nantucket Salvage Company. Cecil Jones was Cecil Cash, apparently. Or maybe it was really the New Bedford, Woods Hole, Nantucket and Cash Salvage Company. I suggested this possibility to Zee as we walked down to the house.

  “I don’t think she got her hundred thou because of a glitch, like I did,” said Zee.

  “Why not?”

  “Because she wrote those checks out a few days apart, over a period of a couple of weeks. I think they would have corrected their glitch before then.”

  “I know everybody thinks that I’m only marrying you for your bod, but it’s your brain that won my heart.”

  “She must have been a rich girl,” said Zee. “There are a lot of them down here in the summer, and not all of them have straight blond hair that comes to their shoulders. I’m sure that some of them are very good workers and save their money.”

  “And make hundred-thousand-dollar payments to salvage companies?”

  “Maybe she was buying stock or something. What do you know about money?”

  She had me there.

  When we got home, Dave and Quinn were awake, so we ha
d lunch out on the lawn table.

  “The perfect place for sloppy eaters,” I said. “It doesn’t make any difference if you get crumbs on the floor.” Then I told them about the checks and the bank statement. “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I don’t think when I’m on vacation,” said Quinn. “I only think when I get paid to do it, so call me next week when I’m back in Boston.” He leered at Zee. “On the other hand, I’ll be glad to think about you for nothing.”

  “Now calm down,” said Zee, patting his hand. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  “I think it sounds like money laundering,” said Dave. “Isn’t there some law that says a bank has to report transactions of more than ten thousand dollars to some agency or other? The IRS, maybe, or some banking commission? So that drug barons and people like that can’t just deposit hundreds of thousands without anybody knowing about it?”

  Zee nodded. “Thus, eleven under-ten-thousand-dollar checks that add up to one hundred thousand dollars, instead of one hundred-thousand-dollar check that the Zimmerman National Bank would have to report. Makes sense to me.”

  “What do you think?” I asked Quinn.

  “Like I told you,” said Quinn, “I don’t think about things like that while I’m on vacation. It’s a beautiful day, and I believe that Dave should have the two-wheel-drive tour while the visibility is good enough for him to see Noman’s Land and Cuttyhunk from Gay Head. I’ll take him in my car so he won’t get any more bruises banging around in that old Toyota of yours. Why don’t you get a new truck, for God’s sake? That thing must be twenty years old.”

  I sneered. “How much do you still owe on that chunk of Detroit iron? And how far down the beach can you get with it? You just lay off my trusty Land Cruiser.”

  Dave and Quinn drove off, and Zee and I stripped to our skins and went out into the yard to perfect our tans, finish the paper, and listen to the Red Sox win a close one at home. By the time Quinn’s shiny new car pulled back into the yard, the game was over, we were clothed, and I was listening to my tape of the three tenors. As is not unusual when I hear such singing, my eyes were blurry and my nose was running. I think that if I could just once be Pavarotti singing “Nessun Dorma,” I could die happy, knowing that my life had been fulfilled.