A Vineyard Killing

by Philip R. Craig

  Max, the bartender, was stacking beer in the cooler. I was his only customer. He straightened and wiped his hands on a towel.

  “J.W. Haven’t seen you for a while.”

  “I’m domesticated these days. Is Bonzo around?”

  “He’s bringing beer up from the cellar.” Max leaned on the bar and lowered his voice. “You heard about what happened out back? Cops were here afterward asking questions. Wanted to know if you’d been here lately. I told them no.”

  “I heard about it. You know Kirkland?”

  He shook his head. “They took me out to look at his face. Never saw a dead man before. Gave me the shakes. All that blood. I never knew there was so much blood in one man. No, I never saw the guy before, dead or alive. Not many suits and ties in here. I’d have remembered.”

  “You see anybody that night who looked like he was waiting for somebody?”

  “Cops asked me that, too. I told them no. Just some of the regulars. I’d have thought that if Kirkland was meeting somebody, they’d meet inside, where it’s warm. It was chilly last night.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “Some woman driving down Kennebec spotted him on the ground. She thought he was passed out drunk and drove right to the police station complaining about me serving drunks. Damned old bitch. It wasn’t whiskey that killed him, though.”

  “No.”

  He frowned. “Say, J.W., you think this is going to hurt business? Jesus, I hope not.”

  “I doubt it, Max. I think it might be the other way around.”

  “You think so? Jeez, I never thought of that. I guess you never know about people, do you?” He straightened and the frown went away. “You need anything from here, or did you just come to see Bonzo?”

  “Draw me a Sam Adams.”

  He did that and I paid and took my glass down to the basement, where I found Bonzo about to bring up a case of Bud Light. Why anyone would choose to drink light beer I cannot understand, but like Max said, you never know about people.

  “Bonzo,” I said. “How are you doing?”

  His mind was as dim as his smile was bright. “Say, J.W., I’m glad to see you! How’s fishing?”

  Long before I ever met him, Bonzo had, I’d been told, been a promising lad. But then he’d gotten hold of some bad acid that had turned him into a gentle child living in a grown man’s body. He loved birdsongs and fishing and worked at the Fireside cleaning the floor and tables and muscling cases of beer and booze. His mother, a longtime teacher at the high school, loved him like the infant he would ever be.

  “Fishing’s not so good this time of year,” I said,

  “but the bass and blues will be here in a couple of months and then you and I will go out and catch some of them.”

  “Say, that’ll be great, J.W. I like fishing.” His smile was curved like a fingernail moon.

  “Bonzo, you must have heard about the man who was killed last night.”

  His smile was instantly gone and replaced by a thoughtful frown. “Yeah, J.W. I heard about that. That’s a bad thing, somebody getting killed like that. And right outside our door, too, right where I take the trash out to the barrels. My gosh, I wouldn’t like to see that!”

  “You weren’t working last night, but do you think you ever saw the man around here before?”

  He stared at me and thought as well as he could. “Well,” he said at last, “like you say, I wasn’t working here so I never seen him out there on the ground. But you know, I wonder if maybe I saw him another time. Max says he was wearing nice clothes. You know, a suit and a necktie and like that. That’s different than what most people wear. And he wasn’t one of the regular people who come here either. He was from off-island, Max says. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I seen a man like that out in the parking lot a day or two ago when I took trash out to the barrels. He was in a car talking with somebody.”

  I took a drink from my glass. “Who was he talking to?”

  Bonzo shook his head. “I dunno, J.W. All I saw was the guy in the suit because I went by his side of the car. I never saw the other person.”

  6

  “Was the man in the suit in the driver’s seat or the passenger’s seat?”

  Bonzo thought hard. “He was the passenger. I wasn’t really looking, you know what I mean? I mean I was just carrying trash out to the barrels and I just happened to notice a man in a suit as I went by and I remember him because of the suit. Nobody much wears suits, you know, unless you’re going to a wedding. You got a suit, J.W.?”

  “No, I don’t. I rented a tux when I got married. What kind of car was it?”

  “Gee, J.W., you want to know something? I got to tell you that I can’t usually tell one kind of car from another these days, but this time was different. You know why? Because all those off-island people that just came here this winter drive the same kind of cars, and I saw one close up and it was one of those green Range Rovers that come from England.” His face almost glowed. “And that’s what the man was sitting in. A Range Rover. I don’t know if it was green because the light wasn’t too good, but it was a Range Rover, all right. When I was little I could tell the difference between lots of cars, but nowadays I usually don’t know one kind from another, but that one was a Range Rover for sure!” He smiled and looked very happy. Good old Bonzo.

  He wasn’t the only one who couldn’t tell one car from another these days. They almost all look alike to me, too.

  “Had you ever seen the car before?”

  “Well, like I said, I seen one of those Range Rovers close up once. It was parked right out there on Circuit Avenue so I looked it over. How much you think they cost, J.W.? A lot, I bet.”

  “More than I can afford, for sure. I don’t suppose you remember the license plate of the one the man was sitting in.”

  “No, I sure don’t. I bet it was from Georgia, though, because Max says all them people come from Georgia. If it was one of them special ones with letters that spell things, I bet I might have remembered because when I see them I like to try to figure out what they say, but I don’t remember it at all so that means it was just ordinary.” He beamed, delighted at his power of reasoning.

  And that was all I could get from Bonzo. I finished my beer and thanked him and promised again to take him fishing when the blues came in, and left him to his work. At the bar Max now had a half dozen customers who had come in for lunch and a brew. I put my glass on the bar and left.

  Of course the man Bonzo had seen might not have been Albert Kirkland at all, but I thought I should drop Bonzo’s tale in Dom Agganis’s ear just in case. I drove to the State Police office and found Officer Olive Otero sitting behind the desk.

  Olive and I had a relationship characterized by mutual dislike that had started the instant we met and had continued ever since. When I tried to figure out why we felt that way, I was at a loss. It was one of those Dr. Fell things, and both of us seemed to work at making it worse.

  Now she looked up at me and tapped her ballpoint pen on the form she’d been filling out. Her mouth was an unsmiling line that parted briefly as one word was spat out.

  “Well?”

  I looked at the form. “If you need any help with the big words, I’ll be glad to help.”

  “I don’t need any help of any kind from you. What do you want?”

  “Actually, I want to talk with your boss. Remember him? The guy who tells you what to do?”

  “He’s not here. He’s out asking questions about a guy named Kirkland who got himself killed. In fact, I think you were on his list of people who might know something. No surprise there. You’re always in the middle of things that smell bad.”

  “Try to restrain yourself, Olive. You might burst a blood vessel. I have a message for Dom, and I’m going to leave it with you. You’ll want to write this down because it’s more than one sentence. Are you ready?”

  “I doubt if Sergeant Agganis needs to hear anything you have to say.”r />
  “I don’t expect you to understand anything more complicated than tying your shoes, Olive, but I think Dom might. Ready or not, here I come.”

  She opened a drawer and brought out a mini tape recorder. “I’d better use this. Your gibberish will need translation, and I’m sure as hell not up to it.” She punched a button and sat back. “Shoot.”

  I told the machine what I’d learned from Bonzo. When I was through, Olive said, “Is that all?”

  “That’s all.”

  She shut off the machine. “It’s not much,” she said, but she was thinking.

  “If Dom can come up with a photo of Kirkland, he can show it to Bonzo, maybe Bonzo can ID him as the guy in the car.”

  “We don’t need you telling us how to do our jobs. If you don’t have anything else to say, the door is right over there. And stay out of police business!”

  “Say thank you, Olive.”

  “Thank you and good-bye, emphasis on good-bye.”

  I glanced back as I went out. Olive was rewinding the tape, looking thoughtful.

  In spite of our mutual hostility, I knew she had to be good at her work or else Dom would have long since figured out a way to get rid of her. By the time she finished replaying the tape I was pretty sure that she’d be considering the same possibilities that I was: that if the guy Bonzo had seen had been Kirkland, Kirkland had been in the parking lot twice and both times on purpose rather than by chance.

  Like me, she might also go further and guess that the parking lot had been chosen because somebody knew it would be a pretty quiet spot this time of year and because Kirkland, an off-islander, knew he’d probably not be recognized even if somebody did see him there.

  The questions I couldn’t guess at were why the two people were meeting and whether the driver the first time was later the killer. Could be, since Kirkland may have been a passenger the first time and was definitely the driver when he was killed. Still, it was a start. There weren’t that many green Range Rovers on the island, and most of them belonged to Saberfox. Of course, even if the man Bonzo had seen had indeed been Kirkland, it didn’t necessarily mean anything.

  But it felt like it did.

  I drove home and planted peas. On Martha’s Vineyard you plant your peas in March, so when other early-spring gardeners meet you and say, “Gotcher peas in yet?” you can say, “Yes.” By June, just after you’ve finished eating the last of your asparagus, you can start eating fresh peas and pea pods. And not much later you can be eating your beans. Gardens are terrific. God was being pretty vindictive when he threw Adam and Eve out of theirs. No wonder there are so many people mad at Her.

  I met Joshua and Diana when they came off the ferry not long before Zee came home from work, and all of us had some hot cocoa and cookies to keep us from starving before supper.

  “Pa?”

  “What, Josh?”

  “When’s school going to be out?”

  “In June. That’s about three more months. Why?”

  “I’m tired of studying. I want to go to the beach.”

  “Me, too, Pa.” Diana the huntress, ever on the prowl for more food, reached for another cookie.

  “You’ll freeze your bippies if you go to the beach these days. It’s cold out there.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “If you don’t think so, put on your bathing suits and go out and sit in the yard for a while.”

  The children looked at each other with happy, surprised expressions.

  “Uh-oh,” said Zee. “Now you’ve done it. It’s too cold, kids. You’ll get sick.”

  “Being cold doesn’t make you sick,” I said. “You can freeze to death, but that’s not being sick.”

  “Can we really do it?” asked Joshua.

  “Pa said we could, so we can!” replied his little sister, swallowing the last of her cookie and climbing off her chair.

  A stormy cloud formed above Zee’s head.

  “You have to wear just your bathing suits,” I said, “and you have to do it right now while there’s enough sunlight for us to find your bodies if you die of cold before you can get back inside on your own.”

  “Come on!” The kids ran to their rooms.

  “I don’t approve of this,” said frowning Zee.

  “They won’t be out long. It’s chilly out there.”

  “If they get sick I’ll never let you hear the end of it!”

  “Come on into the living room with me. We can snuggle in front of the fire while our children freeze to death outside.”

  “It’s not funny, Magee.”

  “Come on.” I reached for her hand.

  We were in front of the living room stove when our offspring, wearing their bathing suits, came running from their rooms.

  “Now, you come in when we call you,” said their mother firmly.

  “Okay, Ma. Come on, Diana!”

  They went out.

  “I don’t like this,” said Zee.

  They were back in five minutes, shivering and going immediately to warm themselves at the stove.

  “It’s freezing out there, Pa! We were like ice cubes!”

  “It’s cool, all right. Now go get into your robes and slippers.”

  “Pa?”

  “What, Diana?”

  “Can I have another cookie?”

  “Just one.”

  They went off.

  “You’re a trial,” said Zee, putting her dark head against my shoulder.

  I moved my arm and put it around her, cupping a breast with my hand. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  She put her hand over mine. “Guess who’s courting Dodie Donawa.”

  “George W. Bush?”

  “No! John Reilley. I got it today from Dodie herself. She says John seems to be serious, too. I think it’s wonderful. John is a good guy and a good worker and Dodie needs a man in her life.”

  “All red-blooded women need manly men in their lives. You’re a classic example.”

  She got closer. “Yes, I am. And men need women. You’re a classic example.”

  “Two classics in the same house.”

  “And maybe there’ll be one more in Dodie’s house before long.”

  “Why not in John’s house?”

  “I’m not sure that John has a house. If he does, I don’t know where it is.”

  “Well, he lives somewhere.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “No. Anyway, they can live in Dodie’s house if they want to. So you think John is a good guy, eh?”

  “Sure. What’s more important is that Dodie thinks so, too.”

  I considered that confidence for a while, then reviewed everything I personally knew about John Reilley. It didn’t amount to much: he surveyed rooms before he entered them, he was soft-spoken on the rare occasions that he had something to say, he had the reputation of being a fine, dependable carpenter, and he rode a moped wherever he went, winter and summer. I doubted if Zee knew much more.

  If ignorance was bliss, Zee and I were a happy pair.

  7

  The snow fell first in great soft flakes, then switched to sleet and then to rain driven hard by a cold east wind. The leak in the corner of the living room that always dripped when there was a wet northeaster and never at any other time was plinking into the bucket I had on the floor. That leak had outfoxed me for months. I’d climbed on the roof with tar several times and had plugged every place I could imagine the water coming through, but the very next time a strong sea wind blew in rain, the leak leaked again. Blast and drat!

  The kids had gone off to school bundled in wool and waterproof jackets, Zee was at work, and I was alone with the pesky, plinking leak and a final cup of breakfast coffee, thinking about the coming need to split more wood for the heating stove in the living room. When you lived as I did, you used your wood for fuel just as you used your garden and the sea for food. It takes work to live the simple life.

  When the phone rang the snow had been washed from the cold groun
d but the rain continued to whip through the barren trees and slap against the windowpanes. March weather. I picked up the receiver. It was a voice I did not know.

  “Hi, is this Mr. Jackson?”

  A telephone sales pitch so early in the morning?

  Some poor soul trying to sell me a condo? What a sorry way to try to make a living.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “This is Maria Donawa. My mom says you helped get her out of jail. I wanted to thank you.”

  “I didn’t have much to do with it, but I’m glad she’s out. Dodie never struck me as the hoosegow type.”

  “I agree. From now on she’ll be sure to check the pockets of the coat she’s wearing before she goes to yell at somebody.”

  “A good policy.”

  “I need to talk to someone who’s a friend of hers. I heard that you used to be a policeman, and that puts you at the top of the list. Can I come by for a few minutes and talk with you? Mom’s here, in the next room, and I’d like to talk with you in private. I need some advice.”

  Women’s best friends and confidantes are usually other women, so I was a little surprised.

  “What about?”

  “Can I tell you when I see you?”

  “Do you know how to get here?”

  “Your mailbox is at the head of your driveway, isn’t it? On the left, just beyond Felix Neck, coming from Vineyard Haven?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Thanks a lot. I’ll be right down.”

  As I hung up, I considered what I knew about Maria Donawa. She was a nurse, a slim young woman of middle height, with her mother’s yellow hair and independent spirit. Aside from that, I knew she’d started dating Paul Fox, thereby infuriating her mother. That was about it.

  I couldn’t imagine what she wanted to talk about.

  A half hour later, I found out.

  “It’s John Reilley,” said Maria, accepting a cup of tea as we sat in front of the living room fire. The rain lashed against the windows and drummed on the roof. In the far corner of the room, drops of water splanked steadily into the bucket.