A Case of Vineyard Poison

by Philip R. Craig

  “Are you close to her, Mr. Jackson?”

  “No. I’ve never even met her. But Miles Vale didn’t wait to find that out. He attacked me, and I suspect that he’ll do the same to the young man I’m trying to locate. I don’t want to frighten your daughter, but I do want to know that young man’s name, so that I can warn him about your ex, and he’ll be on his guard. Miles Vale is an unbalanced man, I think. Do you know the young man’s name?”

  “You mean Denise’s boyfriend.”

  “Yes. I’m told she has one, but I don’t know who he is or where to contact him. I think he should be warned. Can you help me find him? I don’t know if he’s here on the island somewhere, or somewhere over on the Cape.”

  “That Miles! He’s always had that wildness in him. I liked it when we were young, but it didn’t take long for the shine to wear off. He’s a strange man, you know. He can be kind and loving one minute, and cold as ice the next. And he was always jealous of Denise. Always. I think there’s a name for his condition. But then again, he’s a medic, and a good one. He’s saved more than one life by being good at his job. Did he hurt you?”

  “I’ll be fine, but I’m afraid the boyfriend won’t be, if Miles catches up with him. So I want to catch up with him first. Can you help me?”

  “Well, I suppose you’re talking about Glen Gordon. He and Denise have been close ever since they met doing that play in Denise’s freshman year in NYU. He was a senior, but they hit it off really well, and after he graduated and went to work, they still dated, especially after she had that problem in the dorm and got her own place.

  “Glen is a very nice, intelligent young man. I believe he’s working with a firm over on Cape Cod somewhere. I’m sure that’s why Denise went back to the Vineyard for the summer. So she could be with him some of the time, at least.”

  “Do you know the name of the firm?”

  “Let me think. Oh yes. Frazier Information Systems. I remember because my grandmother was a Frazier. No relation to the information people, I’m afraid. I think they’re located in Hyannis.”

  “Do you know what he does there?”

  She laughed. “Oh, I’m sure it’s something I wouldn’t understand if he tried to explain it to me. You know how these young folks are. To them, computers are as common as salt. But to me, they’re a huge confusion. No, I’m afraid I can’t tell you what Glen does. Something to do with accounting, or banking I think.”

  Banking. “He’s a computer guy, eh?”

  “Yes he is. And not one of those egghead types, either. He’s smart as the dickens, but he’s just as warm and nice as you could want. A real gentleman. The girls love him, and I don’t blame them. He’s a charmer.’ Why, if I was thirty years younger . . .” She laughed.

  “Do you know his address, by any chance?”

  “No I don’t. I’ll tell you though, Mr. Jackson, I want you to find him and warn him about Miles. Miles must be twice Glen’s size. The boy might really get hurt. Maybe you should tell the police. Maybe they can do something.”

  “Is there anybody else in Denise’s life? Any other guy I should get in touch with?”

  “Denise has a lot of friends. She’s very popular.”

  I remembered that the teller at the Vineyard Haven National Bank had certainly taken note of her. “Anyone else who might be special? Anyone Miles might think he should be mad at? Does the name Cecil Jones mean anything to you?”

  She thought for a moment. “No, I never heard that name. Of course a pretty girl like Denise attracts the boys . . . Well, you know how young folks are these days.”

  I wasn’t sure that the young folks were any different now than they ever had been, but I didn’t say that to Janice Vale. Instead, I thanked her, assured her that I would do my best to locate and warn Glen Gordon, and rang off.

  Glen Gordon was a tickle in my brain.

  Where had I heard of him before?

  Had I heard of him before?

  Sometimes late at night I get these little flutters in my memory and they drive me crazy. I can’t make any sense of them, yet I can’t stop thinking about them. I can’t go to sleep, and I hate it. It wouldn’t be so bad if, at last, I’d remember whatever it is that’s bothering me, but sometimes the little itches and flutters end up not referring to anything at all. They’re just little glitches that keep me awake for no good reason. Very irksome.

  Fortunately, it was still only mid-afternoon, and although I had cooking to do, I was still able to think about Glen Gordon because in the kitchen my hands do all of that work by themselves, so my brain can do other things. Thus, I thought about Glen Gordon as computer whiz and as somebody who did something or other for banks.

  Computers and banks. Denise Vale and her hundred-thousand-dollar withdrawal. Zee and her on again-off again hundred thou. Poor Kathy Ellis and her hundred thou. Computer glitches.

  Being both a computer illiterate and a man with a permanently unbalanced checkbook, I did not seem to have the tools to make much headway in these foggy realms. Before I could get too lost, Quinn’s car came down the driveway and he and Dave got out. Dave unloaded a case of beer, some French bread and Brie, and some hard pepperoni.

  “Balcony supplies,” he said. “I think we should get right up there and devour this stuff before it goes bad.”

  That seemed like a much better idea than brooding about banking, so we went right up.

  — 15 —

  At five-thirty the next morning a school of big blues moved in to Wasque Point and began to hit. There were several trucks on the beach, but plenty of room for everybody. The rods bent and sang and we walked our fish down under the other rods until we could get them. They were running about twelve pounds and were full of fight.

  I was feeling the results of yesterday’s brawl. My face was puffy, my ear was sore, I was stiff, and my back still hurt where I’d banged into a table. Ever since the doctors had told me that the bullet was still there, I had wondered now and then whether it would someday move and cause me problems. Now, the pain made me fear that the dreaded day had finally come.

  I had received other wounds that had laid me up for a while, but I’d never been afraid of their damage the way I was afraid of the bullet. The surgeons had told me that they were sure that the bullet wouldn’t ever change position, but now I knew that I had never believed them, really. What’s more, they’d never taken into consideration the possibility that I might someday be knocked into a table by an angry medic.

  So my back hurt and I was worried even as I joined the others in hauling in the big blues.

  Dave and Quinn worked hard, but had to take breaks between fish, since their surf-casting muscles were not in shape. Bruises, sore back, and all, I was able to keep at it, and by the time the sun popped up just north of Nantucket and flooded the sand and sea with that clear, born-again light, we had a good number of fish under the Land Cruiser.

  As I brought up my latest blue, the morning air was warming. Dave and Quinn had stripped off their sweatshirts, and gone back after more fish of their own. I caught a glimpse of my face in the rearview mirror and wondered what kind of impression I was going to make on Zee’s mother. I also suddenly wondered if this bullet-near-the-spine business might not make marriage to me a less than good option for Zee. If the damned bullet did move, and if it lamed me or did worse, what kind of life would I be offering her?

  I didn’t like the thought, and wondered if I was just being skittery because I was feeling a little pain. Or maybe more than a little. Had that hurt and the suppressed fear that went with it been the cause of the red veil of primeval rage that had fallen over my eyes in the Fireside? I’ve long thought that all anger is a manifestation of fear.

  Would my fear someday make me angry with Zee? Would I lash out at her whenever my back ached or I felt some pain near my spine? Or was I just feeling sorry for myself? I thought of the sign over the doorway to my kitchen: NO SNIVELING. Good advice. I pushed my worry away from me and went back after more fish.
r />   Both of my fish boxes were full when Quinn and Dave ran out of steam and we called it quits. The sun was clearing the clouds along the horizon, and the air was clear and warm. The wind was still blowing the watermelon scent of bluefish over the water and into our nostrils.

  Dave and Quinn poured coffee and leaned against the hood of the Land Cruiser. I found the Rhode Island C and W station on the radio, and we listened to Tanya sing about her problems with her man.

  Dave flexed his fingers and shook his hands. They get stiff when you’re hanging on to a rod and fighting good-sized bluefish. Sometimes at the end of a summer I have a hard time getting my fingers to straighten out completely. When I was young and working as a pick and shovel man on road gangs during vacation, my fingers were sometimes hooks by the time I went back to school in the fall. Dave’s hands were the tools of his trade, so he needed to be careful about them.

  “How many did you get?” I asked him.

  He grinned. “A million, if you count the ones I lost. I think I landed eight. What a morning!”

  “That’s about a hundred pounds of bluefish,” I said. “Not bad.”

  “It’ll help pay for the three plugs I lost.” He knotted and unknotted his hands. “Man, it’s frustrating to lose them right in the surf. You work them all the way in, and then lose them right there. I even lost one after I got him up on the sand. He snapped the line and was back in the water before I could get to him, leader, plug, and all. Whew!”

  He laughed.

  “They don’t count till they’re in the box,” said Quinn.

  “How many did you get?” asked Dave.

  “I don’t know,” said Quinn. “I lost track. Enough.”

  “How about you, J.W.?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied. I always know. Between us, we had almost four hundred pounds of fish. That would more than pay for lost gear. “I think that’s enough exercise for one day,” I said. “We’ll sell these guys on the way home.”

  Waylon and Willy and friends of theirs sang to us as we drove into Edgartown, got rid of the fish, and went on home. There, I dangled the Land Cruiser keys in front of Quinn’s nose. “I have things to do, places to go, and people to see. I’m a busy, busy man. You, on the other hand, are just another loafing vacationer. I’ll trade these keys for yours, so you and Dave can hit the beach and watch the girls, while I toil to make America great.”

  “I’ll give you a hand at the toil,” said Dave.

  “It’s not real toil,” I said. “I’m just going to do a little weeding in the garden, then talk to some people.”

  “J.W. doesn’t do real work,” explained Quinn. “He’s retired, and lives off our taxes. Come on, kid, let’s throw together some lunch and hit the beach. We don’t want you showing up back in Boston without a tan.” He dug out his car keys and handed them to me. “Can I trust you with an American car?”

  “Can an American car be trusted?”

  “Farther than you,” said Quinn. He squinted at me. “You’d better do something about that face, if you want Zee’s mother to have a good impression of you.”

  “I’m not marrying Zee’s mother.”

  “Don’t be too sure.”

  They left, and I went out and weeded the flowers and the gourds I had growing along the fence. I liked gourds because I had fond memories of how they’d looked in my father’s garden, when I was a kid. In those days I was reading Tarzan books, and, although I’d never seen a genuine jungle, I thought the tendrils and leaves of the gourd vines looked like miniatures of the real thing. Not too many years later I had seen a real jungle, but I still liked gourd plants, even though the two weren’t much alike. So much for realism.

  I picked some pea pods from the garden, and took some of last winter’s scallops out of the freezer. I had a woked meal in mind for supper, and you can’t start a woked meal with better stuff than fresh pea pods and scallops.

  I put the pea pods and scallops in the fridge, and broke out a cold Sam Adams, the sun being over the yardarm in Rio by that time. Then I called the police station, looking for Tony D’Agostine. He wasn’t there, of course, but I left a message for him to call me. About a half hour later, he did. I asked him how I could get in touch with Kathy Ellis’s roommate, Beth Goodwin. He told me where she lived and where she worked, and gave me her home phone number.

  “You having any luck tracking down the source of that water hemlock?” I asked.

  “Not yet. Seems like the girl, Kathy Ellis, was sort of a health food nut. Ate fiddleheads and like that. Vegetarian. Cooked her own meals so she wouldn’t have to eat what the other people in the house ate and they wouldn’t have to eat her stuff. That’s why nobody else got sick. She was the only one to eat the hemlock.”

  “And nobody knows where she got it?”

  “So they say.”

  “How many people were in her house?”

  “Just three. The two females and a male.”

  “Peter Dennison?”

  “Yeah. How’d you know that?”

  I told him about meeting Dennison and Beth Goodwin in my driveway the day after Kathy Ellis’s death.

  “Do you believe them when they say they don’t know anything about the hemlock?” I asked.

  “You were a cop,” said Tony. “What do you think?”

  I thought that Tony was reserving judgment about who was telling the truth. He didn’t believe and he didn’t not believe.

  “What do you want with Beth Goodwin?” asked Tony.

  “I want to ask her about Kathy’s financial situation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I told him about finding Kathy Ellis’s bank statement, then about Denise Vale’s bank account. I could almost see his ears prick up. “First Zee had a hundred thou for a couple of days,” I said. “Then there was Kathy’s hundred thou, and then there was Denise Vale’s hundred thou. That’s a lot of hundred thous.”

  “It sure is,” said Tony. “I don’t make that much in a week, including overtime. You still have that bank statement, I think you should bring it down to the station. It sounds like maybe it’s evidence. I wish I knew what it was evidence for, though.”

  I told him I’d bring it down, hung up, and dialed the number he’d given me. I didn’t expect anybody to answer, since it was a beautiful day and the college kids on the island would probably be on the beach if they weren’t working. To my surprise, a female voice said, “Hello?”

  I told her who I was and asked to speak with Beth Goodwin.

  “This is Beth. I remember you. What can I do for you, Mr. Jackson?”

  “I’d like to come by and talk to you. About Kathy Ellis.”

  After a moment she said, “Sure. Why not?”

  I went into town and left the bank statement at the police station, then hooked back up the Vineyard Haven Road till I found the turnoff that led to the house Beth Goodwin and her friends had rented for the summer. It was an old house in the middle of a new development west of the road that had never quite developed as much as its developers had planned. Like a lot of people, they had presumed that the land boom in the early eighties would last forever, and had overextended themselves so that mostly they had nice curvy roads that were lined with empty lots and only a scattering of large, new houses. Beth Goodwin’s house had been there long before the paved roads had been punched through. It was an old farmhouse that was not in great shape, but it brought its owners a lot of rental money during the summer.

  There were similar failed developments all over the island, sad mementos of greed and shortsightedness. A lot of money had been gambled and lost during the boom period, further evidence that the wheeler-dealer types and the bankers who financed them were probably as dumb about economics as the rest of us. Somehow that notion always heartened me, since it suggested that my own admitted ignorance about money might be shared by the supposed professionals in the field. Why is it that we like to see the pros go down? The banker go bankrupt, the psychologist go dotty, the priest get nailed b
y the vice squad?

  Don’t ask me.

  I parked the Land Cruiser and walked to the house. Beth Goodwin met me at the door. She was wearing a robe and carrying a portable phone.

  “I’m out back, catching some rays. I have to go to work in an hour, so I didn’t have time for the beach. Come on through.”

  We walked through the house and out into the backyard. There was a rusty table there, topped by an umbrella that had seen better days. The table was surrounded by plastic chairs, the kind you can buy in the A & P for about six bucks. There were two aluminum lounge chairs. Beth Goodwin went to the one facing the sun, took dark glasses out of a pocket of the robe, then took off the robe and lay down. She was wearing a one-piece bathing suit slightly larger than a dishcloth, and had a very nice tan. She looked at me.

  “You don’t mind, do you? I can talk and tan at the same time.”

  I didn’t mind at all. I could talk and stare at the same time.

  “I’ve told the police everything I know,” she said. “I don’t know what I can tell you that I didn’t tell them.”

  “Officer D’Agostine tells me that you have no idea where Kathy might have gotten the water hemlock.”

  “That’s right. When I think about that, it scares me. If Peter and I were vegetarians, we might be dead, too! Poor Kathy.”

  “She bought her own food and prepared it for herself. Is that right?”

  “Yes. Even in college, she liked to fix her own food. It was hard for her to find the kind of food she liked in the cafeterias, so mostly she preferred to do her own cooking. The thing that just breaks my heart is that she was the healthiest person I know. She was very conscientious about her diet, and about exercising. And then this had to happen. It makes you wonder.”

  I thought that Beth looked in pretty good shape herself, but didn’t say so. “Where did she shop?” I asked.

  “In the A & P, and at the health food stores.”

  “I heard that she liked wild food. Fiddleheads, and that sort of thing.”

  “Oh yes. She made sassafras tea from the sassafras trees that grow down near Sengekontacket, and she found lamb’s-quarter growing in the old garden over there.” She pointed, and I saw that there was indeed an old garden behind a badly listing shed. Part of it was still wild, but some of it was newly cultivated. “Peter and Kathy put in that little garden as soon as we got down here in May. They have lettuce and radishes and things like that. Peter likes to garden.”