A Case of Vineyard Poison

by Philip R. Craig

  I remembered that she’d said that when she and Peter had come down my driveway.

  “Could the water hemlock have been growing back there by the garden, or down where she got the sassafras?”

  “I don’t know. I think the police and somebody from the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary tried to find out, but I don’t know if they found anything.”

  Then I remembered something else Beth had said, and a little light flickered in the back of my brain.

  I leaned forward. “When you were at my house, you wondered what people would say when they heard about Kathy’s death.”

  “It was awful. Peter and I had to tell her friends, and the people where she worked.” She sat up and I saw tears beginning to run down her cheeks. She took off her glasses and wiped at her eyes. “It’s only been a week. Sometimes it feels like a day, and sometimes it seems like a year. I’m sorry.” She began to cry.

  I waited and after a while her sobs lessened. She wiped at her face with the robe.

  “I’ve got to get dressed for work,” she said.

  “What did the people say when you told them?” I asked.

  “They were shocked, just like us. Nobody could believe it.”

  “How did Gordy react?”

  “Oh, that was the worst of all. I didn’t know how to get in touch with him, but that night he called Kathy and I had to tell him that she was dead. I think he was more devastated than the rest of us. He asked all kinds of questions and then he seemed to just break down. He couldn’t talk and had to hang up.”

  “Gordy was her boyfriend?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Ever since she went to college.”

  “NYU.”

  “Yes. We all go to school there. That’s where they met. She was a freshman and he was a senior, but they hit it off right away.”

  “Does the name Cecil Jones mean anything to you? Did Kathy ever mention the name?”

  She looked at me with her watery eyes. “No. I never heard of him. Who’s he?”

  “I don’t know who he is. Where does Gordy live now? Where was he calling from?”

  She got up and put on the robe. “I don’t know exactly. He lives over on the Cape someplace. He’d come over to see Kathy here, or sometimes she’d go see him there. He came over the very next day after the accident and tried to help us get through it. I think he was the one who needed the help, if you want to know the truth.” She brushed at a strand of hair. “Look, I really have to get ready for work. I’m sorry.”

  I got up. “You’ve been very helpful. When will Peter be home? I’d like to talk to him a bit, too.”

  “He won’t be home until late. He’s working in a kitchen and he’ll be there until the restaurant closes. You can probably call him late tomorrow morning. He gets up just before noon. You just missed him today.”

  We walked back through the house. At the front door, I asked her one last question: “What’s Gordy’s real name?”

  “Glen,” she said. “Glen Gordon. But everybody calls him Gordy.”

  “A charming guy, eh?”

  She nodded. “He really is. You just have to love Gordy. It almost killed him when Kathy died.”

  Almost, but not quite. I thanked her for her help and drove away.

  — 16 —

  I still had a little time before getting gussied up to meet Zee and her mother, so I went home and looked up Miles Vale’s telephone number. Miles lived in the Dark Woods, up behind the new post office. Feeling as achy as I did, I figured he probably felt worse and would either be at home or in the hospital. I dialed his number. Miles answered. I told him who I was. He hung up.

  I dialed again and he let the phone ring quite a while before answering it. Again I told him who I was. This time he didn’t hang up.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I want to talk about your daughter’s boyfriend.”

  “What about him?”

  “Is his name Glen Gordon?”

  “What of it?”

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “Over on the Cape someplace.”

  “Do you know his address?”

  “If I knew the son of a bitch’s address, I’d go over there and kick his ass.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because he’s fucking around with my daughter, and he’s a bastard, that’s why.”

  I didn’t think it would do much good to point out that his daughter was a grown-up woman who probably didn’t need or want Daddy protecting her from men.

  “She never said where he lived? What town, maybe?”

  “She doesn’t talk to me much. Her mother poisoned her mind against me.”

  Miles was a sad case. There are other people like him, people who see themselves living in an evil, exploitive world. I think it’s a kind of projection; they see other people being petty and vindictive the way they themselves are. On the other hand, Miles was a medic, and apparently a good one. People are more complex than we sometimes remember. He was not a happy man, though, and I thought he was not likely ever to be one. I decided the best way to deal with Miles was to appear sympathetic.

  “Listen,” I said, “I want to find the son of a bitch myself. I know you thought I was just another guy after Denise, but you were wrong. I’m after this Glen Gordon character. You punched a friend, buddy, not an enemy. But let’s forget about that. Anything you can tell me about Gordon, anything at all, might help me find him.”

  Miles thought about that for a while, then he gave a grunting sort of laugh. “You banged me pretty good, pal. You hurting any yourself?”

  Miles was apparently the sort who didn’t mind hurting if he knew you hurt too.

  A little flattery might grease the wheels. “I have some bruises I didn’t have before. You pack a pretty good punch.”

  “Yeah, I was going good for a while. Then I wasn’t going so good.” I don’t think he knew quite how things had turned around.

  I gave him an out. “Hell, I have ten years on you. Besides, I think I got lucky. Let’s just not do it again, okay? I think once was enough for me.”

  He grunted some more. “Me too, buddy, me too. Next time we’ll have a beer instead, eh?”

  We manly men chuckled at each other.

  “Say,” he said. “Why you after this guy?”

  “Your daughter’s not the only girl he’s involved with,” I said. “I have my reasons. Let’s leave it at that. You know what I mean?”

  Miles thought he did. “Well, lemme see if I can come up with anything. Like I said, Denise doesn’t talk much to me. Seems to me, though, that this Gordon son of a bitch lives over in Hyannis, or maybe Falmouth. She goes over there to meet him, and he comes over here to meet her. That’s about all I know.”

  “Would you know him if you saw him?”

  “Never laid eyes on him.”

  “Did you ever hear of a man named Cecil Jones?”

  “That’s a limey-sounding name. No. Who is he? Some other bastard who can’t keep his pecker in his pants?”

  Sweet Miles. “I don’t know who he is. The name just came up.”

  “Well, I never heard of the guy.”

  “When Denise goes over to the Cape, does she take the ferry, or the Island Queen, or the Hy-line boat to Hyannis?”

  I could almost hear him snap his fingers. “Say, that’s right! She takes the Queen! That means the bastard lives in Falmouth.”

  Maybe. Or maybe Gordon met her there in his car and they drove off to his place in some other town.

  “Do you have a picture of your daughter? If you do, I’ll take it up to the dock where the Queen comes in and see if anybody on the boat can tell me anything about her. Like if somebody met her on the other side.”

  This notion seemed to please him. “Yeah. She sent me this picture of her in her dorm in college. It’s pretty good. You come by, you can take it, long as you don’t lose it or anything like that.” Miles had gotten very friendly, it seemed. Compensation for having picked a fight
with me?

  “I’ll be right over,” I said.

  Miles met me at his door. He looked terrible. He was hunched over and moving very slowly, and his face was puffy and many-colored. He looked at me and grimaced.

  “Yeah, we got to each other, all right. My mistake. I thought you were just another guy after my little girl.” He put out his hand. “No hard feelings.”

  We shook hands. “I’m old enough to be her father,” I said. “Besides, I’m getting married in a couple of weeks, and one woman is all I can handle at a time.”

  “Well, I wish you luck, buddy. I was married once and it turned sour. Here.”

  He gave me a five-by-seven framed picture of a young woman. She was fresh-faced and smiling. Her hair was a light brown and curled down to her shoulders. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt emblazoned with the initials NYU, and was sitting at a desk. There were posters on the wall behind her, and a pile of books and papers on the desk.

  “Don’t you lose that,” said Miles. “I want it back.”

  I assured him that I wouldn’t, and drove to Oak Bluffs. I felt sorry for Miles, but I didn’t think I’d ever warm to him.

  The boats from Hyannis and Falmouth come into the Oak Bluffs harbor and load and unload at the dock by the parking lot, not far from a heavy concentration of moped dealers that a lot of islanders would like to see take their business to some other island. It was a nice day, and I was quite prepared to laze away some time in the sun, looking at the boats in the little harbor, but as luck would have it the Island Queen was just coming in through the channel between the stone jetties. The Queen ferries day trippers between the Vineyard and Falmouth, and makes several passages a day. It provides fast, comfortable service to a lot of people, but I had hope that some of the crew would remember a pretty girl like Denise Vale, who took the boat fairly often.

  And such, indeed, proved to be the case. The second crewman I showed the picture to even remembered her name.

  “Denise. Sure. A dish. We talked. Saw her just last week, in fact.”

  “Going to the Cape or coming back?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t remember. Usually she went over one day and came back the next. I think she had some guy over there. Lucky him.”

  “She ever mention his name?”

  “If she did, I don’t remember what it was.”

  “Was it Glen Gordon? Or maybe Gordy?”

  “Sorry, pal.”

  “Did she travel alone or with somebody?”

  “Alone. I don’t think I ever saw her with anybody.”

  “Did she meet anybody when she got to Falmouth? Was anybody waiting for her?”

  He grinned. “I wondered who a girl like that was meeting, so I watched her a few times. She never met anybody. She just walked up the street alone.”

  “And nobody brought her to the boat when she came back?”

  “Nobody I ever saw. Say, what’s this all about?”

  It was nice to have an honest answer available. “Her dad’s worried about her. He’s laid up for a while, so I’m doing some legwork to try to track her down. I thought maybe she was with her boyfriend.”

  “Well, I don’t know if I helped you any.”

  I wrote my name and number on a piece of paper and gave it to him. “If you see her, tell her I’d like to talk to her. If she doesn’t want to do that, give me a call. There’ll be a couple of bucks in it for you. Her dad’s pretty anxious about her.”

  “You a private eye or something?”

  “I have a badge, but this isn’t anything official.”

  That was true. I still had my old Boston P.D. badge, and I was anything but official in my snooping.

  “Well, okay. If I see her, I’ll have her call you or do it myself.”

  The last of the Cape-bound passengers were aboard. The gangplanks were pulled, the whistle blew, and the Queen pulled away and headed out across the sound to America.

  It was a bit past noon when I got to Denise Vale’s house. I wondered how Roy from Princeton was doing. Better, I hoped. Two college-age girls wearing beach robes were getting into a rather spiffy-looking convertible. My friend John Skye, who, between Vineyard summers, teaches things medieval at Weststock College, says that one way you can tell the difference between students and teachers is that students always have newer and more expensive cars. I got out of the Land Cruiser and walked over.

  The women eyed me without enthusiasm. It was clear that they were headed for the beach and didn’t want to delay their departure.

  I put on my best smile. “I’m looking for Denise Vale. Is she here?”

  They exchanged looks. Then the nearer one spoke.

  “Who are you?”

  “J.W. Jackson. Is Denise here?”

  A slight pause. “No, she isn’t.”

  “I talked with Roy yesterday. He said she hasn’t been here since before the weekend. Do you know where she is? Her father’s worried about her.”

  That seemed to loosen them up a little. “We’re worried, too,” said the girl. “It’s not like her to do something like this.”

  “We’re starting to think of going to the police,” said the other girl.

  “That might not be a bad idea,” I said. “Have you tried to find her? Have you called her mother? Her boyfriend? People she might be visiting? The hospital?”

  “The hospital? No, we haven’t . . . That is, we did call Glen, but he said he hasn’t seen her. He said he’d call if she showed up. Maybe we should call her mom . . .”

  “Glen Gordon? Her boyfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you give me his number? I’d like to talk with him.”

  They exchanged looks, then the nearer girl got out of the car. “I’ll get it for you. He lives over on the Cape.”

  She went into the house.

  “I hear that Glen Gordon attended NYU?” I said.

  The girl in the car nodded. “That’s where Denise met him. There are a lot of NYU kids down here for the summer.”

  “I hear that Denise is twenty-three.”

  The girl was too young to be worrying about her age or anyone else’s. When is it that women start lying about how old they are?

  “That’s right,” she said. “She’s going to have a birthday next month.”

  “How old is Glen?”

  She thought about that. “I guess he must be a little older. I think she said she met him in school when she was a freshman. He’s got one of those faces that look about twenty. You know what I mean. Sort of a baby face.” She suddenly grinned. “He’s really cute, actually. We kid Denise about him, and tell her that if she ever gets tired of him, to let us know and we’ll be glad to take over. She doesn’t think it’s as funny as we do.”

  “That kind of guy, eh?”

  She made a little waving gesture with her hand and kept her grin. “Well, you know. . . .”

  The other girl came out of the house with a piece of paper in her hand. She gave it to me.

  “I don’t think Denise is with him,” she said. “I think that Glen would have had her call, if she was.” She put her lower lip between her teeth. “Do you really think we should call the hospital, and the police?”

  “It won’t hurt,” I said, thinking that I should call the hospital myself. “But unless they actually know something about her, the police will tell you that most missing persons are missing because they want to be, or because it just never occurred to them that other people might even think of them as missing.” I glanced at the sun. “If you two plan on catching some rays, you’d better get going.”

  Actually, I was the one who needed to get going, so I thanked them and left.

  First I went to the hospital. There was no Denise Vale there. There was no Zee, either. She was home with Mom, presumably getting squared away for the big wedding. I wasn’t sure why it took so much effort to get married, but apparently it did.

  I was hungry, but I thought I knew where I could get some lunch and some information at
the same time, so I headed for Vineyard Haven.

  — 17 —

  Hazel Fine generally went home for lunch. Lunch was always very good, so I didn’t mind dropping in just as it was being served. Mary and Hazel, being the nice kind of people they were, could hardly just sit there and eat while I just watched, so they would come up with some food for me, too. It was an old bachelor ploy that everybody knew about, but it still worked as well as ever, so I never hesitated to put it into effect. The fact that in a couple of weeks I wouldn’t be a bachelor anymore was not disturbing, since it had been my observation that married men whose wives were away could use the same trick to get free meals from women who felt sorry for them. I suspected that it might be possible for an enterprising man to live a long and good life and never have to buy or prepare his own food.

  “Well, well,” said Mary, answering the door. “Look who’s here. It’s the bridegroom.”

  “Is Hazel here?”

  “You know very well she’s here. Come on into the kitchen.”

  I followed her and discovered Hazel attending to a bowl of cold broccoli soup and thin chicken and cucumber sandwiches.

  She smiled at me. “J.W. How nice. Have you eaten? No? Well, sit down and join us. There’s plenty for all. Mary, I think we have a bottle of white wine in the fridge: I’m sure J.W would like some.”

  “I’m sure he would,” said Mary. “Perfect timing, J.W.”

  “Thank you. Would you believe me if I told you that I really didn’t mean to drop in just in time for lunch?”

  “No.”

  “Well, okay, I’ll fess up. But that’s not the only reason.”

  She poured me a glass of Chablis and set a bowl of soup in front of me. I tried it. Delish! I love cold veggie soups.

  “Is the other reason a wedding issue?” asked Mary.