Vineyard Shadows

by Philip R. Craig

  I unlocked the gun cabinet and got out my old .38 S and W police special. I stuck the gun under my belt and pulled my shirt down over it. Then I called Helen Fonseca, Manny's wife, and asked if she'd look after Josh and Diana for a couple of hours.

  “Sure, J.W. Bring them right down.”

  In addition to being Zee's pistol instructor, Manny was the island's premier gunslinger and National Rifle Association member, but he and Helen were both total softies when it came to children, their own or anybody else's.

  I collected my offspring, got them and myself into dry rain gear, and trotted us all through the drizzle to the Land Cruiser.

  “Where we going, Pa?”

  “To Mrs. Fonseca's house. You're going to stay there for a couple of hours while I do some work.”

  “Why can't we go with you, Pa?”

  “Just because. It's big-people work. No kids allowed.”

  “Can we have ice cream, Pa?”

  “Sure. When I pick you up again.”

  Manny and Helen's house was an old island bungalow. Manny's gun shop was in the basement. Upstairs, the rooms were full of worn, comfortable furniture and good smells. Helen welcomed the kids into her kitchen and waved me on my way. Good old Helen.

  I got back into the Land Cruiser and drove to John Skye's house. When I turned off the asphalt, I studied the driveway. There were wet tire tracks there that seemed wider to me than the tracks made by Tom Rimini's Honda. I unzipped my topsider and followed the tracks.

  Rimini's car was in front of the house where he'd parked it before. The wider tracks led down to the doors of the barn.

  I looked at the house. Smoke was rising from the fireplace chimney. I sat in the car and wondered if I was being overly nervous. I decided I probably was. I got out and went up to the door and knocked.

  Nothing. I knocked again. I heard a voice saying something I couldn't understand. Finally, footsteps came toward the door. I put my hand under my shirt and stepped to one side. The door opened and Tom Rimini stood there, looking flighty, like a deer in hunting season.

  “J.W.! I asked you to call before you came by.” He casually put an arm across the door.

  “I did call. Nobody answered.”

  “Oh.” He rubbed his free hand across his lips. “Oh, yes. I remember hearing the phone. I was in the john.”

  I looked over his arm into the house. I saw no one. “I've got some news about Graham,” I said. “I think it may interest you.”

  “Graham? News? What? . . .”

  The rain was soaking his shirt. “Let's go inside,” I said. “You're getting wet.”

  He seemed to notice the rain for the first time. “Oh. All right. But just for a minute. I was just going out for some groceries.”

  Jumpy Tom stepped back into the entryway and I went in after him. I could see a nice fire in the living room fireplace. Very cozy on a drizzly day.

  “Now,” said Tom, “what's this news about Graham?”

  I told him.

  “Good Lord,” he said. “You mean he's not really a cop? But he had a badge.”

  “You can buy yourself a badge in Wal-Mart. And when he was a real cop, he wasn't working on gambling and gaming, he was DEA. He was working on narcotics.”

  “But . . .”

  “You're being conned,” I said. “I don't know why. Do you?”

  He shook his head. “No. I can't imagine. Are you sure about this?”

  “I'm going to get a picture of Graham. I'll show it to you. If it's the same guy, we'll at least know that much for sure.”

  “Yes. Bring it by when you get it. How long will it take you?”

  “A couple of hours.”

  “All right. Come back then. I'll be home from shopping by that time.” He stepped toward the door. I glanced at the nice fire, then went out past him. When I was in the Land Cruiser, he waved, then shut the door.

  I drove toward the highway until the house was out of sight, then stopped and walked back until I could see it. After a while, Rimini and a woman came out of the house wearing raincoats and walked down to the barn. They opened the big doors and she went inside and backed a newish Ford Explorer out into the yard.

  I ran back to the Land Cruiser and drove out to the highway. There was another driveway a hundred yards toward Edgartown. I backed into it and waited. In a few minutes the Explorer came out of John Skye's driveway and turned toward me. When it passed I could see that the woman was alone. I pulled out and followed her.

  — 16 —

  The Explorer went right into Edgartown, the move of a driver who didn't know what village traffic was like during a rainstorm, and immediately was entangled in the snail-paced movement of Main Street traffic. Since I was right behind the Explorer, I got a good look at its license plate.

  The Explorer and my rusty Toyota inched down Main with the woman ahead of me looking this way and that way as she realized that she wasn't going to find a parking place anywhere. We loafed along until we got to the four corners, where she took a right on South Water and escaped from the worst of the jam of pedestrians and cars. A couple blocks later, she took another right and eased along Cooke Street before going left on Summer. I stayed about a half a block back and did the same.

  I had thought she might be going to a hotel, but as I trailed her along the narrow back streets of the village I decided that she was only getting out of John Skye's house for a while and had hopes of using the time to park and wander around Edgartown just like all the other people under umbrellas. She finally found a spot out beyond the Vineyard Museum and I took a look at her as I drove past. She was an attractive woman in her thirties, and if she had noticed me following her, she gave no indication of it. Her face wore that annoyed expression that people get when it's taken them a long time to do a simple thing like park a car.

  If I'd been able to find a parking place of my own, I'd have trailed her on foot in the slight hope of perhaps finding out something useful about her, but I didn't manage that, so I drove to Pease's Point Way and followed it to the police station.

  “Didn't I just see you yesterday?” asked the Chief in feigned surprise. “What do you want me to do for you this time?”

  “I'm a citizen. I just want you to protect and serve, as usual.”

  “Emphasis on serve. Well?”

  I told him about my discoveries regarding Willard Graham.

  “Interesting. If Willard is the right Graham, that changes things. If I don't have to track down Graham anymore, what's your next idea about how I should waste my time?”

  “I'd like you to tell me who owns this Ford Explorer.” I gave him the license number.

  To my surprise, he didn't even make a wisecrack before he went out of the office, then came back and handed me a piece of paper.

  Grace Shepard, aged thirty-five, of Boston's North End, owned the Explorer.

  “That help?” asked the Chief.

  “Not yet, but it might. Is Grace Shepard on any of your wanted posters?”

  “While I was on the wire just now, I checked her out. Nobody wants her for anything. Not even a parking ticket. Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

  “I can't tell you what I don't know.”

  He shook his head. “You'd worry me if I gave you any thought at all.”

  “Worry about the traffic downtown, Chief, not about me. Thanks for your help.”

  I went out, got into the truck, and drove to Aquinnah with the rain slapping against my windshield.

  A rainy gray day on the Vineyard has a charm of its own. Once you get out of the village centers there aren't as many people on the roads, the trees and grass are shiny and clean, and the haze makes mysteries of ordinary sights. The world is being born again, washed clean of its sins, given a new start. When the clouds part and float away and the sun rises and burns off the mists, it's again the First Day, and all of us are back in Eden.

  Or so it sometimes seems.

  Not always, of course.

  Joe Begay
opened the door before I knocked and I went in. He handed me a photograph. It was of a middleaged guy with a smile on his face. He looked genial and very ordinary, the sort of man you'd never notice on the street.

  “Willard Graham, in person,” said Begay. “Here, I got you a couple extra copies, in case you want to spread them around.”

  “You find any other Grahams in your travels?”

  “I found several, but no others that seem to fit the bill. I think this is your guy. Show the picture to your friend Rimini, and then you'll know for sure.”

  “I will. Did you ever hear of a woman named Grace Shepard?”

  “You're full of questions. No, I don't know anybody by that name. Who is she?”

  I told him.

  “You should be talking with Rimini, not me. You can ask him when you show him this picture.”

  “I'll do that.”

  “You want me to ask around, see if anybody knows her?”

  “I don't want you to use up all your IOUs. She's from Boston. I'll ask some people up there, first.”

  “I think Rimini may be trying to pull your strings,” said Begay, who, I suspected, had spent a lot of time in shadowlands where many events and people were not as they seemed.

  The idea that Rimini was being less than straightforward with me was not a shock. I thanked Joe for his help and drove back down-island.

  The rain was getting thinner, but the wind was picking up, making things colder. My heater didn't work very well, but I turned it on anyway. If you use your heater in June, what are you going to do when January gets here? I'd find out in January.

  I drove into John Skye's yard. There were no new car tracks leading to the barn. I parked beside Rimini's car. Rimini opened the door of the house and waved me in.

  The fire still burned in the fireplace, casting a warm glow out into the living room. I stood before it and pulled a photo of Graham out from under my topsider.

  “This the guy?”

  Rimini took the photo and gave it a worried look. “Yeah. This is him. Is he the one you told me about? He's really not a cop?”

  “No, he isn't. He used to be with the DEA, but they canned him. They couldn't prove it, but they thought he pocketed money he found in drug busts. How did you meet him?”

  “He found me. I don't know how. He said he was a cop and he wanted to nail Sonny Whelen. He said that if I didn't help him, he'd take me instead. I was scared, so I did what he said. He'd call me and we'd meet and I'd tell him whatever I'd heard. If he's not a real cop, what's he doing?”

  “You tell me.”

  He rubbed his hands. “I don't know. I can't imagine.”

  “What did he want to know from you?”

  “Oh, what I'd been doing as a bookie. What people had said about payoffs and losses. What I'd heard Sonny say or what other people said about him. That sort of thing. It never made any sense to me. I don't know what he was planning, except that he wanted to get the goods on Sonny. I don't know anything about crime, not really.”

  He certainly didn't look like he understood crime. He looked like a frightened schoolteacher. It was enough to soften your heart.

  “You're pretty good,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That hand-rubbing routine. That worried expression on your face. You should be onstage.”

  He stepped away, wide-eyed. “I don't understand you. What are you saying?”

  “I mean you're a liar, and a good enough one to have fooled me.”

  “No.”

  I held up a hand. “Now your lying is okay with me, but now that I've caught on I don't think I'm going to waste any more time with you. So we'll pack up your gear and put it in your car and you can go sponge off somebody else. If you do as good a job on them as you've done on me, you'll probably be fine.”

  “I don't know what you mean. I've told you the truth! I've told you everything!”

  “You didn't mention Grace Shepard.”

  He sat down on the couch. “Grace . . . ?” He put a look of confusion on his face and let his voice fade away on a line of question marks.

  “You know Grace,” I said. “Grace Shepard. She was sitting with you in front of this fire when I came by the first time. Lives in Boston, in the North End. Pretty woman. Thirty-five years old. Drives the Ford Explorer that was parked here in the barn. She's down in Edgartown window-shopping right now. I imagine she'll give you a call later, to see if I'm gone so she can come back. That Grace.”

  He stared into the fire, then rubbed a hand across his forehead. “I didn't want you to know about her. I didn't want Carla to know. I'm sorry. I was going crazy here. I called her up and asked her to come. She just got here this morning.” He looked up at me. “Don't tell Carla. Please.”

  “What phone did you use when you called her?”

  His eyes flicked to the wall phone, but his practiced liar's voice said, “I used the cell phone, just like you said.”

  I wondered how many women had caught my eye after I had married Zee. A lot. I was married, but I wasn't blind. I remembered the feeling of Carla's body against mine, and the warmth of her kisses.

  “Where did you meet her?”

  He shrugged. “At a conference. She teaches in town. She and her husband had just broken up. We were both bored out of our minds, so we sneaked off for a drink. You probably wouldn't understand. . . .” His voice was tinged with fatalism.

  “When was that?”

  “A year or so ago.”

  A year or so, and Carla knew nothing about it. Or maybe she did. Maybe that was the reason for the heat of her arms and lips.

  “Your private life is your business,” I said, “but I can't help you if you keep lying to me. I have to know the truth from you and I won't lie to your wife. You've got to send this woman home. Otherwise, things get too complicated. If you won't do that, you'll have to move out of here and take care of yourself.”

  His sad face was pleading. “Please. Don't tell Carla. It would make her miserable. It's too late for Grace to leave today, but I'll have her go back tomorrow. And don't make me leave. I'll figure something out in a couple of days, and then I'll be out of your hair. I'm sorry that I held back on you, but I needed Grace and I knew you wouldn't let her stay. Please.”

  Please. Rimini had used the word more often in a half hour than I do in a week. It is a word a lot of people hide behind, because it gives good shelter.

  I looked into the fire, just as my ancestors had no doubt done in their caves. It danced and swirled and hypnotized. There is no greater magic than fire, nothing more eternal.

  “Well,” I said. “At least I don't have to talk with Graham about witness immunity for you. I had that in mind.”

  He tried a joke. “Maybe you can arrange it for him.”

  I wasn't amused.

  — 17 —

  I picked up the kids and took them home, wishing that the rain would stop. It looked like it might, but not right now. The flowers and veggies and lawn and weeds loved it, but the Jacksons flourished more in sunshine. On the other hand, the dreary day was consistent with my dreary feelings about Tom Rimini.

  With a rueful thought about the size of my next telephone bill, I called Quinn. Nobody was at the desk, but an answering machine asked me to leave a message. I left one asking Quinn if he could find out anything about Grace Shepard, then called Detective Gordon R. Sullivan. Gordon was out detecting. Everybody was out but me. I left Gordon the same message I'd left for Quinn. I hung up and thought awhile, then called the offices of the Boston School Committee. After a considerable runaround by various employees of that venerable and highly political institution, I was told that no one by the name of Grace Shepard was teaching in the system.

  Hmmmm.

  While I waited for somebody to call back, I made four loaves of white bread, using the recipe from my copy of Betty Crocker's old cookbook, which was held together by duct tape. While it was rising, I made a batch of my spaghetti sauce, of which there is no bette
r, the secret ingredients being a can of cream of mushroom soup and a good shot of Donna Flora's Bean Supreme, which, like onions, improves almost any dish that isn't dessert.

  The loaves had just come out of the oven and I had cut three hot thick slices and slathered them with butter for me and the kids, when the phone rang.

  Quinn or Sullivan?

  Neither. “This is Norman Aylward,” said a voice. “I'd like to talk with Mrs. Zeolinda Jackson.”

  “She's working.”

  “Brady Coyne asked me to talk with her. I'm a lawyer. I worked with Brady on a few cases before I moved down here.”

  “I'm J. W. Jackson,” I said. “Brady said he was going to put us in touch with an island lawyer.”

  “That's me. My office is in Vineyard Haven. I think we should all get together as soon as possible so we can get to know one another. Then, if we think we can get along, we can discuss the D.A.'s interest in the incident involving your wife.”

  “Zee works all day. Are you available in the evening?”

  “I can be. Seven o'clock tonight sound okay? I imagine the D.A. is already considering his options.”

  “Seven it is. Where's your office?”

  He told me and we rang off.

  It irked me that we even needed a lawyer, but I wasn't surprised. Very odd charges have been brought against people and institutions, and very odd decisions have been made by juries and courts. People who should be in jail aren't and people who shouldn't be are. Our most ancient ancestors, like us, probably noted that even when we think we know what justice is, it eludes us as often as not.

  This being the case, lawyers like to remind us that as much as we hate them in the abstract we like to have one on our side when we're headed for court.

  I wiped melted butter from my chin and licked my fingers. Yum!

  “It's good, Pa,” said buttery Diana.