Vineyard Deceit

by Philip Craig

  In the morning Zee and I slept in. I got up finally and made some blueberry waffles and brought them and the fixings and coffee bade to the bedroom. Zee’s smile lit up the room, and she dug right in. Never stand between a hungry nurse and food.

  At nine o’clock, I held a finger to my lips. Zee stopped chewing and listened.

  “Hear that?”

  “What?”

  “Silence.”

  “So?”

  “Manny Fonseca is always on the range early Saturday morning. Today he’s not there. I guess he did enough shooting yesterday to last him for a while.”

  “Poor Manny,” said Zee. “Good old Manny. When I saw Nagy sneaking out of the woods, I just took off through the brush toward the shooting range. Manny was there with a guy I don’t know, and the two of them were terrific. The guy went for a phone to get the cops, and Manny came running back with me. I’ll never forget him.”

  “The old Wampanoag-hating, pistol shooter isn’t all bad, eh?”

  “No. Maybe nobody is.” She chewed and swallowed a bite of waffle. “Except maybe the Padishah. I haven’t found much that’s good about him yet. I really have to wash my hair, Jeff.”

  “Women will never seize control of the world if they keep taking time out to wash their hair,” I said.

  “Women don’t want to seize control of the world,” she said. “How many times do I have to tell you that? Men are the ones who want the world. That’s why they keep their hair so short. It’s a sure sign. You have to take me home. You don’t have any good shampoo here.”

  “I do too.”

  “No you don’t.”

  I took her home and kissed her and drove back to Edgartown to Amelia Muleto’s house. She was in her gardening clothes.

  “Come in, J.W. I’ll put some water on for tea. I hear that you had some excitement up your way yesterday. I want to hear all the details. You are all right, aren’t you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I sat while she went into the kitchen. After a bit she brought the teapot into the living room.

  “Now tell me everything,” she said.

  I told her.

  “The Padishah is a bastard,” she said. “I always knew it. I think it’s genetic. All of the Rashads are rotten. At least the last generations have been. Willard Blunt always said they were madmen, all of them! I’m so happy you didn’t get hurt.”

  “Zee saw the present for Willard Blunt’s nephew.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You remember. The Friday before the big Damon shindig. Zee came here and found you and Willard Blunt making a surprise present for his nephew. The hollow book. The book you showed to me earlier.”

  “Oh. Oh yes. His grandnephew, it was, I think. Yes. We put a superhero watch inside. I’m sure the boy loved it.”

  “I think Willard Blunt ordered Zee’s kidnapping because of that present. What do you think?”

  She held her cup in both hands, then set it down in its saucer. “What do you mean?

  “I think you know.”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t. Perhaps you’ll tell me.”

  “Yes. The first thing is that Willard Blunt was an only child. He didn’t have a nephew or a grandnephew. You know that. More tea, please?”

  She poured. Her hands were very steady. She picked up her cup.

  “I want you to understand that what I’m saying is just between you and me,” I said. “If you tell anyone else, I’ll deny ever saying any of it.”

  The cup shook a bit in her hands. Then it steadied. “Go on.”

  “Here’s what I think “happened. It’s the only explanation I can come up with. Let’s call it a story. Feel free to edit it if you want to. You know, add, subtract, change things . . .”

  “All right.”

  “I think that you and Willard stole the necklace as a team. I imagine the two of you go back a long way in your dislike for the Padishahs of Safofim. Both of you were young and idealistic when Blunt went off to Sarofim in the war and saw a girl and her father destroyed by the Rashads. I don’t think Blunt ever got over what happened and I imagine he told you about it and that you gave him a lot of sympathy. I think that when he learned that the necklace was going to pass out of your estate and be returned to the Padishah, the two of you decided not to let him have it, but to get it into the hands of the political opposition. A sort of last chance to damage the Rashads, as it were. I’m not too sure of the details, but I think that’s the motive. Am I okay, so far?”

  “Please go on.”

  “I think you did it this way: Blunt brought the necklaces, the real one and the pastes, to the Damon house, and Dr. Youssef, the curator of the National Museum of Sarofim, verified that the pastes were pastes and the real emeralds were the real emeralds. Youssef testified that he looked at the pastes first and then, while Blunt put the pastes and their box into the safe, he checked out the real emeralds, then put that necklace into its matching box and that box in the safe and locked the door.”

  “Yes, I believe that is the report I heard.”

  “I think that while Youssef was looking at the real necklace, Willard dropped the pastes into his pocket and put an empty box into the safe. It would have been pretty easy. They were alone, and Youssef didn’t care about the pastes anyway. All he cared about was the real emerald necklace. What made everything work, I think, is that everybody trusted Willard and was interested in the real necklace, and nobody was really interested in the pastes. Is this what they call a dénouement?”

  “More tea, J.W.?”

  “Thanks. Then I think that Willard brought the pastes to you. I’m not sure where you carried them, but on Saturday night you took them to the party with you. You’re a pretty nervy lady, I think.”

  “Thank you.”

  “When trusty Willard and your sister went upstairs to get the pastes, he opened the safe, opened a box, and put the real emeralds around her neck. She thought she was getting the pastes, and since they were good pastes and she probably didn’t look at them too closely and wasn’t really interested in them anyway, she didn’t notice the difference.

  “The same was true for everyone else. We all thought we were seeing the pastes, so that’s what we saw. Your sister put the necklace around your neck, and you wore it as you left the room, and soon all eyes turned to watch your sister come downstairs with the real thing. I think it was a lovely plan. I was right beside you, and I never doubted that the necklace you were wearing was the one with the pastes. No one else did, either. A hundred people would have testified under oath that you were wearing the pastes. Blunt was a smart old guy.

  “I think that when you acted pale and wan and stopped at the ladies’ room it was all part of the plan. I think that there was a small glitch in that plan when Helga Johanson went into the ladies’ room with you, but you managed to switch the real necklace for the pastes anyway. And then you put the pastes, which were what everybody thought you’d been wearing anyhow, into the safe in the library in front of two witnesses, Helga and me.

  “There’s not much else to it. Upstairs, both boxes in the safe were empty. The emeralds had been stolen. There was a rush to the library safe and there, sure enough, were the pastes. All you had to do was wait around until they let you go home, and off you went, emeralds and all. Slick. And gutsy.”

  “I do not have a gut, J.W. And I was not faking being ill that evening. It was tension, I think. I was worried about Zee and I had never been a jewel thief before. I found the whole thing quite nerve wracking. I knew that there was a stall in the ladies’ room where I could be alone and switch the necklaces, so I didn’t mind Ms. Johanson going in with me. She was very kind, in fact. I carried the necklaces in my sash, by the way. I sewed a little pocket there, just big enough to hold one of them. I felt very strange, I can assure you, walking around my sister’s house for hours while all those policemen were searching high and low for the necklace. I don’t think I am really cut out for a life of crime.”

&n
bsp; “That’s probably a good thing. The police have enough troubles already. I think that when you got home, you put the necklace into that hollow book, wrapped it up, and waited for the post office to open on Monday. That was a dangerous period, that waiting time. If anyone had caught on to the theft, you’d have been nabbed with the goods. But no one did catch on, and the next day, guess who you got to mail the book for you.”

  “I hope you aren’t angry.”

  “No. I’m glad to have helped damage the Padishah, if you want to know the truth. Thanks for the opportunity. I wouldn’t have any objection to any of this if it hadn’t cost Zee three days of being treated like an animal. I couldn’t stand being taped to that damned chair for twenty minutes. Zee had three days of it. That was rotten.”

  She nodded her head. “I know it was. But I ask you to believe me when I tell you I didn’t know anything about that. I never would have allowed it, had I known.”

  “I believe you. And I believe that Willard Blunt knew that you wouldn’t put up with it and that’s why he never told you. I figure that Zee came in that Friday and caught the two of you with the book. You both stayed with the story that it was a gift for his grand-nephew. But Blunt was afraid that Zee had seen enough to put two and two together and would tie the stolen necklace to the hollow book. He knew he was going to be everyone’s logical first suspect, after all, and you and he were old buddies, and Zee was a smart woman. He needed to get her out of the way until he could get the necklace off of the island on Monday. After that he didn’t care if she guessed anything or not. The emeralds and the book would be gone, and there’d be no evidence to support her suspicions.

  “He had arranged for some SDL kids from Weststock to come down and throw some red herrings across his trail that night. The firecrackers over the wall, the party crashers at the dock. The plan worked pretty well, by the way. Afterwards a lot of cops wasted a lot of time trying to track those people down. Blunt phoned his SDL people from your house and arranged for them to kidnap Zee after he took her home and to hold her until they heard from him on Monday.”

  “But he died on Sunday night.”

  “That’s right. He died on Sunday night. Suicide, according to Nagy, and I think he’s right.”

  “Suicide? I thought . . .”

  “Willard Blunt subscribed to the Hemlock Society idea that a terminally ill person is justified in taking his own life. I agree with him, by the way. On the other hand, he was a Quaker who didn’t approve of taking another person’s life. Finally, he genuinely hated the Padishah and his agents and probably wanted to kill them even though he ethically disapproved of violence imposed on others. An interesting moral dilemma. He resolved it by taking Nagy’s pistol and killing himself with it. Two birds with one stone: he was free from suffering, and Nagy, the Padishah’s agent, looked like a murder suspect, which could also be bad for the Padishah.”

  “That’s pretty farfetched, J.W.”

  “There’s more. Early Sunday evening, he and Nagy and Jake Spitz, the FBI man, had a talk, and Nagy had suggested looking into what Blunt’s old pal Professor Hamdi Safwat was up to.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  “Right. The book I mailed was sent to Safwat. I think that Blunt wanted to deflect a serious inquiry into Safwat’s part in this operation until the necklace was out of the country. So he not only stole Nagy’s pistol, but told him that he himself had stolen the necklace. He told the truth, in fact, and by shooting himself, which sooner or later he was going to do anyway, he distracted investigators from Safwat. A third bird with the same stone. He came to you that night, remember?”

  “Yes. He came to say goodbye for the last time. He didn’t say that, but I knew.”

  “He couldn’t tell the SDL kidnappers anything because he didn’t know how the night would actually turn out. He didn’t know if he could find Nagy or someone else to whom he could confess. But Nagy was true to his word and walked home that night, and Blunt met him.

  “When the SDL people learned of his death, they didn’t know what to do with Zee. They decided to take her home again, but they could just as easily have decided to kill her and bury her someplace. Revolutionaries have a tendency to kill people who are inconvenient to them. I wish I could talk with Blunt and have him tell me whether I’m right or off in left field about this, but it feels right to me.”

  “And where do you think the necklace is now, J.W.?”

  “I mailed it to Hamdi Safwat last Monday. By now I imagine it’s in Europe or even Sarofim itself. I think I’d have put it and some junk jewelry on the neck of some woman SDL member and had her wear it when she flew to London or wherever. Then I’d have had her take a flight to Amsterdam and give it to somebody to hold until it was politically a right time for the necklace to reappear. Something like that.”

  “You’re a nice boy, J.W. I’ve often said that. Shall I make us some more tea?”

  “I’ve changed my mind about not telling this tale to anyone. There are two people I want to tell. But I won’t unless I have your permission. Jasper Cabot is one.”

  “Jasper?” She thought for a moment. “Well, I don’t see why not. I trust Jasper. He is an old friend.” She smiled at me. “I assume Zeolinda is the other person.”

  “Yes. I don’t like to deceive her about anything.”

  “I understand. Yes, do tell Zee. Like you, I don’t want to try to hide this from her. The three of us are too close for such deceptions. You love her, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but I don’t take that to mean that I have any claims on her.”

  “Does she know?”

  “I’m sure she does. How did I do solving the crime?”

  “You did very well. I’m proud of you. You know where the bathroom is. I notice that you’ve been getting squirmy. Tea will do that to you.”

  I got up without a further invitation.

  29

  The day after Labor Day begins a new season for Martha’s Vineyard. Most of the tourists are gone, the water is still warm, the air is clear and clean, and the bluefish are beginning to come back. What could be better? I had my new Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby pin on my hat and was with Zee off Makoniky Head on the north shore. We were anchored just off the rocks and were casting northeast with the wind. We had three nice blues in the fish box and we were both on again.

  The fish were jumpers and were out of the water as much as they were in it. About forty feet off the boat, mine went high into the air, gyrated, and tossed the plug even higher.

  “Wow! Way to go, fish!”

  Zee hauled hers in close, and I scooped it up in the net. A nice eight-pounder.

  “Way to go, Zee!”

  We added her fish to the box, and I glanced at the sun. The tide was running west against the wind, but the wind was dying. Time to get going if we wanted to fetch Menemsha by dark. I put up the big gaff-rigged main, hauled in the anchor, and began the beat westward along the shore.

  “So this is what they mean by boat fishing,” said Zee.

  “Yes indeed. It’s a different game.”

  “You can get to all those places you used to get locked out of.”

  “Yep. I figure we can fish the whole damned island in the Shirley J. No more worrying about whether the Gay Head town fathers and mothers block off their roads to down-island fisherman. We’ll sail right up to the beach and nail the fish whenever we want to. Same goes for every place else too. The world is ours.”

  “It’s great having a boat. No doubt about it. I love it.”

  “We’ll be in Menemsha Pond just in time for cocktails.”

  And we were. I dropped the hook and furled the sail, and we lay at ease in the lee of the Gay Head hills. I filleted the fish and threw the carcasses overboard. Food for smaller fishes. I put the fillets back in the ice chest, then mixed up a sauce of mustard, dill, and mayo and set it in with the fillets. By the time I’d done that, Zee had the martinis ready. We sat in deck chairs and watched the evening come in on us. />
  “Good old Jasper Cabot,” I said. “Here’s to you and your checks, Jasper.”

  We sipped our drinks.

  “What was the Shirley J’s name before she was the Shirley J?”

  “Jeremy called her Wanderer. He said he didn’t care if I changed her name, because he was done with her. Here’s to you, Jeremy.”

  We sipped. To the north, the little village of Menemsha, Walt Disney’s idea of what a fishing village should look like, lay in the last of the evening sunlight.

  “So Jasper paid pretty well, eh? Down payment on the Shirley J, anyway. Not bad, J.W.”

  “He seemed satisfied.”

  “Did you see the Globe this morning?”

  “No.”

  “The necklace has showed up in Paris. The Sarofim Democratic League had a news conference. Showed the emeralds. Hung them around some beautiful woman revolutionary’s neck. She gave a speech. The police arrested several people. Up in Weststock, Hamdi Safwat gave another speech. Exciting times.”

  “The latest revolution is gaining momentum, eh?”

  “Seems that way. You know, this isn’t a bad way to live. Let’s circumnavigate the island. We can anchor tomorrow in the lee of Nomans and do a little fishing, then sail down along South Beach and fish some more at Wasque, about three casts offshore. We can sneer at the poor slobs on the beach who can’t reach the fish we’ll be pulling in and then go up to the Jetties and maybe pick up Iowa and take him out for a ride. Then we can duck in and spend the night in Cape Pogue Pond.”

  “You can’t anchor overnight in Cape Pogue Pond anymore. New rules. Not smart rules, but new ones.”

  “Edgartown is getting as bad as Gay Head, what with all its damned regulations! What we’ll have to do is put up our black sail and sneak in at night, like pirates.”

  “Good idea. Where’ll we get a black sail?”

  “Your girlfriend, Helga Johanson, can make it as a thank-you gift for your hospitality to her.”

  “Helga Johanson is home with her husband over in America. Besides, Helga is not the seamstress type. She’s in the detecting business.”

  “Well, you’re not.”