Vineyard Deceit

by Philip Craig

  As she came through the door, her nose twitched. Then she thought and then she sniffed some more. I sat her down at the table and poured white wine. She looked at the bhajji.

  “Say, I don’t remember having this before. Looks delicious.”

  “An old family recipe. Let’s dig in.”

  We did. Another excellent meal from the kitchen of J. W. Jackson. I am the first to praise my cooking when it works.

  “Well,” I said, “what do you think of the veggies?”

  “I’ve never had this dish before, but there’s something about it . . .”

  “That’s familiar?”

  “Yes. It’s not the vegetables. I’ve had all of them before. It must be the . . .” She leaned forward and sniffed the bhajji. Her eyes widened. “It’s the spices.” She looked at me. “I smelled these spices when they had me tied up!”

  I felt happy. “Coriander and cumin. They use a lot of it in Middle Eastern cooking. Indian cooking. Sarofimian cooking.”

  “Sarofimian cooking . . . ?”

  “Unless you have some other Middle Eastern or Indian types mad at you, I think you got grabbed by some Sarofimians. The Sarofimian Democratic League has my vote.”

  “The Sarofimian Democratic League? But why? I wouldn’t know the Sarofimian Democratic League if I fell over it. What did they want with me?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I plan to find out. Are you sure about these spices?”

  “Yes. I don’t know if I ever smelled this particular dish, but I’m sure it was this combination of spices. But what did I ever do to the Sarofimian Democratic League? The only Sarofimians I’ve ever seen are that Padishah and his henchman in the boat.” She shivered. “And I have a feeling that if either one of them managed to grab me I wouldn’t have gotten off so easily.”

  “I think you’re right about that, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t them. The only other Sarofimians that are on the island are students, so they’re prime suspects. When I find the right ones, I’ll find out why.”

  “Hey,” said Zee, “easy now.” She put her hand on my arm.

  I saw that my hands were fists. I eased them open and willed away a tightness behind my eyes.

  “They didn’t hurt me,” she said gently. She was dedicated to healing wounds, including her own. She smiled. “I don’t need avenging.”

  “You’re right,” said my voice.

  “Let’s have coffee.”

  “Good idea.” While we drank it, I told her of my conversations with the people I’d met.

  “I can’t believe Willard Blunt had anything to do with me being kidnapped,” said Zee, when I was through. “He and Aunt Amelia have been friends for decades. He was a very nice man.”

  I’d thought so too. But then Caesar had considered Brutus quite a guy.

  “If you spend the night, we can talk about this until morning.”

  “You’re predictable and sweet,” said Zee, “but I have to go home. You cook a great meal and you make a flawless martini, but I don’t want to live with you. Yet.”

  Yet. “Yet?”

  “At least yet. Are you mad at me?”

  “Would it help if I was?”

  “No.”

  “How about if I’m happy with you?”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it helps, but not enough to keep me from going to my own house.”

  “Drat. Phone me when you get home.”

  “You don’t have to watch over me, Jefferson.”

  “Humor me.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “I’ll come up and see how things are myself.”

  “I thought so! I’ll call you.”

  She did. After I hung up I put out the thermos, made sandwiches for two, set the alarm for four, and went to my lonesome bed.

  There isn’t too much light at four in the morning in August, but by the time I made instant coffee, packed the sandwiches, collected light rods and a tackle box, and got some sand eels out of the freezer, it was getting brighter.

  I drove down through sleeping Edgartown to Collins Beach, unchained my dinghy from the seawall, and loaded it in the back of the LandCruiser. Long ago, my father just pulled his dinghy up above the high-water mark and left it, but for years now no unchained dinghy has been safe, particularly during Regatta week. The gentlemen yachtsmen borrow them after late nights of drinking and go out to their million-dollar boats and then set the dinghies adrift. Now we keep all our dinghies chained up. So it goes.

  I dropped the dinghy overboard in Oak Bluffs harbor and at five-thirty was outside Bonzo’s door. Bonzo was waiting.

  “Hey, J.W., here I am.”

  “There are already some guys ahead of us,” I said.

  “They won’t get ’em all,” he said confidently.

  “None of us may get any. Bonito are harder to hook than bluefish and harder to keep, too.”

  “But we’ll get one, won’t we?” Bonzo never doubted that I could catch a fish almost whenever I wanted one. I couldn’t bring myself to shatter that simple faith. I decided, as I always did, to let God do it, if it had to be done.

  “We’ll give it a shot,” I said.

  We unloaded the gear into the boat, and I parked the LandCruiser in the parking lot where the Ocean Queen loads and unloads its daily hordes of day-trippers from the Cape.

  My trusty little Seagull kicked over as always, and we putted out through the channel between the stone jetties into the brightening east.

  The sea was flat and dark. We hooked to the right and motored down to the dock where the big ferryboats landed. For reasons known only to bonito, the ferry dock is a good place to hunt them. We pulled around the end of the dock and found a half dozen other boats before us. They had the choice spots right next to the pilings. I found a place a little farther out and dropped anchor.

  “Hey,” said Bonzo, looking around. “This is neat.”

  It was neat. A cool morning promising to warm, flat water, a brightening sky, fish to be caught, and time set aside to catch them. Was there a fish pond in Eden?

  We put sinkers on the lines and bobbers above them and sand eels on the hooks and we made our casts. Then we sat and watched the bobbers. Nothing happened.

  No matter. The day grew lighter, and suddenly there was the sun, like a giant orange, rising from the sea. There were stringy dark clouds just above the horizon, and the orange ball of sun walked into the sky behind them. We sat and watched the new day being born. The dinghy rose and fell on tiny swells that bent the mirror of water beneath us.

  My bobber dipped.

  I waited a second and set the hook, then reeled in.

  My hook was empty. Some wily fish had stolen my sand eel. I put on another one and cast out again.

  In the next hour our bobbers bobbed and our eels were snickered away. The air grew warmer and we slipped out of our jackets. The sun rose above the clouds, and a small breeze ruffled the surface of the water. I felt lazy and good.

  Bonzo yelped. His bobber was out of sight. He yanked the tip of his rod into the air. The line started cutting through the water. His reel zinged as the line ran out. I got my line in out of the way.

  “Hey!” cried Bonzo. “Lookie, lookie!”

  “Get him!” I said.

  Other fishermen looked at us. Bnozo’s line snaked away, slowed, then hooked back.

  “Reel him in. Keep that line tight!”

  Bonzo reeled like a madman as the fish raced toward the boat and then, at the last moment, peeled away. Bonzo’s reel sang.

  The fish turned back and Bonzo reeled. The fish went under our boat, and I tipped the Seagull up so the line wouldn’t snag.

  “Wow!” yelled Bonzo as the fish tore away from us and the line snaked off the reel once more.

  I got the net. The fish was still full of beans, but was slowing. Bonzo reeled, and the fish flashed alongside the boat, in plain sight now. Then he was gone on another of those wonderful runs, but a slower and shorter r
un this time. Then he was under the boat again, and as he came up, I netted him and swung him into the dinghy. Bonzo fell over backwards and almost dropped his rod.

  “A nice one!” I said, feeling a grin filling up my face. “A damned nice bonito!”

  The hook was about one flip of the fins from being torn from his mouth, but it was too late for any escape now. Calls of congratulations came from the other boats.

  Bonzo was as happy as a human could be. “Hey, I got one! I got him, J.W.!”

  “Yes, you did! You got yourself a really nice fish. This is the only fish anybody’s caught today! Hold him up so the other guys can see him.”

  Bonzo did, and the other fishermen waved and laughed and made statements about some people having all the luck. Bonzo grinned and waved and finally sat down.

  “Now you get one, J.W.,” he said. “Then we’ll both have a fish.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You’re outfishing me so far. Maybe you got the last one.”

  He thought and thought and finally remembered the fishing maxim. He grinned. “If you don’t throw, you don’t know,” he said.

  “You’re right.” I made my cast. I felt good.

  We fished all morning, but that was the only fish we caught. I thought it was enough. As we putted back into the harbor at eleven, I asked Bonzo if he’d found anybody from Sarofim.

  “No. Not one. I tell you what I did, J.W. If anybody talked sort of funny, you know, or maybe looked like they came from someplace else I don’t know about, I went right up to them and said ‘I think you’re from someplace I don’t know about. Are you?’ I did just that, and, you know, they weren’t mad or anything, ever. There was two people from a place called Kenya. That’s in Africa someplace. There was three from Japan. But there wasn’t any from Sarofim.” He looked at me with a happy face. “You know what the funniest people said? They said they lived in a guitar! I laughed. I think that’s pretty funny, don’t you, J.W.?”

  “Pretty funny,” I agreed. He was full of pleasure about his fish.

  “They been in there before, sometimes, but I never asked them anything before. But this time I said, ‘You live in a guitar?’ And they said yes, and we all laughed. And you know something else, J.W.?”

  “What?”

  “One of them is one of the people who like those musicians you like too. I think that is very funny, don’t you?”

  What musicians? We pulled up to the dock. “Tell me what’s funny, Bonzo.”

  “Don’t you get it, J.W.? The people who live in a guitar like the Gits! Guitar, Gits. You get it, J.W.? Gits and guitar are almost the same sound! Funny!”

  I put a grin on my face. “Get your fish, Bonzo. Your mom is going to be very pleased.”

  “Yeah,” he beamed. “Yeah, she will.”

  “Were the guitar people in the Fireside last night, Bonzo?”

  His brow wrinkled, then smoothed again. “Last night? Yes, last night. They usually come in late, you know, just before we close up. The one girl, she puts money in the machine and plays the Gits. They all like the Gits, but she likes them best of all.” He looked at me with his great empty eyes. “She likes the Gits just like you do, I guess, J.W. Say, when can we go fishing again? I like fishing for bonito.”

  “Sometime soon. You’re ahead of me and I have to try to catch up.”

  I drove him home. His mother came out of her ginger-bread house and admired his wonderful fish. Bonzo smiled his wide, bright smile, waved, and took the fish inside.

  “Thank you, J.W.,” said his mother.

  “You should be proud of him,” I said.

  “I am. Oh, I am.”

  I drove back to the dock and loaded the dinghy into the LandCruiser.

  The people who lived in a guitar liked the Gits. The people who lived in Gwatar liked the Gits, and one of them liked the Gits a lot. Zee’s abductors played Git music until Zee was sick of it.

  I drove up to the hospital, parked, and walked up to the emergency room door and peeked in. Zee was talking to a young doctor in a white coat. I sneaked back to my car.

  I drove to Edgartown and chained the dinghy back in its place by the seawall. Then I went home for lunch. I felt like a hound who had finally picked up a scent.

  19

  I went down to the police station after lunch and stopped by the Chiefs office. Naturally he wasn’t there, so I drove on downtown and actually found a parking place on Main Street. After a half an hour on Main, a meter maid will come by and nail you with a ticket, but I thought a half hour should be enough. I found the Chief coming out of the courthouse. Policemen spend very little time catching criminals and a lot of time doing paperwork. We leaned on his cruiser, and I told him what Bonzo had said. When I was through, he grunted. “Now I imagine you’re going to go up to the Fireside tonight and hope the Gwatar people come in so you can follow them home or some such thing.”

  “They didn’t make you the Chief for nothing,” I said admiringly. “I want to get in touch with Jake Spitz. How do I do it?”

  He dug out his little notepad and read off a phone number. “I doubt if he’s there,” he said. “Why do you want to talk to him?”

  “I want to find out what the Padishah and his bodyguard are up to. I don’t even know if they’re still on the island.”

  “Does it make any difference?”

  “It might. My anonymous phone caller said some foreigner was out to damage me and Zee. The Padishah is the only guy I know who might fit that description, and I think Colonel Nagy is the man he’d send to attend to the job. The Padishah doesn’t strike me as the type to do his own dirty work.”

  “Is that the only reason you want to know where they are?”

  “You sound doubtful. You’re becoming a suspicious old man.”

  “Is that the only reason?”

  “No. Nagy pulled a gun when Zee pushed his boss overboard. I don’t know guns as well as Manny Fonseca does, but it looked to me like about a 9 mm semiautomatic. I’d like to know if the Colonel still has his pistol or whether it’s the one found in Willard Blunt’s hand.”

  “Would you recognize it if you saw it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Too bad.”

  “I’ll give Spitz a call.”

  “No need, if that’s all you wanted to ask him. The Padishah is in Washington with Ed Damon and that Standish Caplan fellow. I think the idea is to glue this treaty together in spite of the necklace being stolen. He’s getting the red-carpet treatment. Meetings with bigwigs in the Administration, Pentagon, and so forth.”

  “And Colonel Nagy?”

  “Ah. He’s back on Chappy. Came back from Boston by copter on Tuesday when his boss flew down to Washington. The Padishah’s man in the hunt for the necklace.”

  “And how are the forces of truth and justice doing?”

  “Not so good. There is some new information, though. The autopsy report on Blunt just came in.”

  “Death by gunshot wound to the head?”

  “A 7.65 slug. One round fired from the gun in his hand, incidentally. The magazine was one short, so it was the round in the chamber. Went right up through Blunt’s brain and lodged in the roof of the Jeep. Something else. Blunt was filled with cancer. Lucky to have lived long enough to kill himself.”

  “Is that right?’

  “It is. Now maybe we know why he shot himself.”

  “Maybe. The bullet definitely came from that gun?”

  “According to the FBI lab.”

  “You’re a fountain of information today, Chief. I’m impressed.”

  “I’m tired of having half the cops in the world crawling around town. I want this case solved so I can get back to PCing drunks and listening to people complain about their parking tickets. I’m so desperate that I’m even talking to you.”

  “Parking tickets!” I looked at my watch. “I gotta go!”

  I was just in time. The meter maid was one car away when I got to the LandCruiser. I gave her a big smile, and s
he, being a nice college girl, smiled back. She wasn’t mean; she just had a job to do. I drove down and got in line for the Chappy ferry. I was giving them a lot of business lately. I decided I’d charge it to my boss, just like my father, who had been a radio-drama fan, told me Johnny Dollar used to do. Jasper Cabot could afford to give me an expense account.

  There was still a cop at the gate to the Damon place, but he let me in. The helicopter was still sitting on the lawn. It costs a lot of money to keep a helicopter on hand like that, but the Padishah apparently had enough to manage it.

  I got past the Thornberry man at the door and found Helga Johanson in the library with George. The tables were still covered with papers, and George was on the phone. It was hard to tell whether they’d made any progress on the case.

  “I’m looking for Nagy,” I said.

  “You’re welcome to him,” said Helga. “He hasn’t done one thing to help solve this case. He’s around here somewhere. Upstairs, maybe, in the Padishah’s suite.”

  “I’ll find him. How are you doing?”

  “I’m ready for that evening out. We’re on the last of the names on our lists. Not an honest suspect among them.”

  I told her about the autopsy. She hadn’t heard.

  “Cancer. I’m not surprised. He didn’t look like a well man.”

  True. I told her about the Colonel’s pistol. That interested her more.

  “Does he still have his pistol?” I asked. “Would you know it if you saw it?”

  “I never saw it,” she said. “I saw the holster on his uniform belt and I figured he carried one under his shirt when he was in civvies, but I never saw it. It would be interesting if he didn’t have it now, wouldn’t it.”

  “I’m going to ask him about that right now. You want to come along?”

  “I think I will,” she said.

  “By the way,” I said. “I’d really like to know one thing. Last Saturday. Where did you carry your piece? I looked you over pretty well and I didn’t see one bulge that didn’t belong there.”

  She gave me a sweet smile. “None of your business. A lady has to have some secrets. Shall we go?”

  We went upstairs and down the hall to the Padishah’s suite of rooms. Helga knocked on a door, and after a moment the door opened and Colonel Ahmed Nagy stood there. He was wearing summer trousers and a short-sleeved shirt. His dark mustache split his hatchet face in two.