A Vineyard Killing

by Philip R. Craig

  “What about him?”

  “He’s courting Mom. He spends more and more time with her. I think they’re getting serious. It worries me.”

  “Your mother is a smart, grown-up woman.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t know how silly grown-up women can be sometimes. She doesn’t know a thing about him. He comes to see her and she just beams and I swear her brain gets turned right off! Maybe he’s dangerous or one of those men who lives off women. I think he’s about to move in with us. I want to know more about him. Is he a gigolo or is he serious?”

  “You’re worried about your mother and John Reilley, and she’s worried about you and Paul Fox.”

  She shook her head. “She’s mad at Paul because of Donald. She liked Paul just fine until she learned his last name. When he came to the house the first time, she was happy because she thinks I should be settling down and I didn’t seem to be doing that with Rick.”

  “That would be Rick Black, I presume.”

  “Yes. Rick is the guy I’ve been going with lately. You know him? He just got himself a new pickup a couple of days ago, but until then he used to drive a beat-up old Land Cruiser like yours. You must have seen it.”

  “I remember seeing it.”

  “He’s a carpenter. We went to high school together and we’ve been dating. Mom likes him. She feeds him good meals when he comes by and she even loaned him her car when he still owned the old Toyota and it went on the blink. But Rick isn’t ready to settle down, so when Paul asked me out I said yes. When he showed up at our door the first time, Mom was just as nice as pie. Then later, when she found out his last name, she blew her stack and you know what happened after that.”

  “Pistol-packing Momma got sent to the county pen.”

  She nodded. “Exactly. Gives you some idea about how her feelings can get between her and her brain. The same thing happens when John Reilley shows up. She gets all mellow and fluttery and stops thinking.”

  “What advice do you want from me? I don’t write a column for the lovelorn.”

  She looked at me. “I know. I guess I don’t really want advice. What I want is somebody to find out what kind of guy John Reilley is. If he’s as nice as he seems, that’ll be fine. But if he isn’t I want to know about it right now, before he and Mom get too close.” She hesitated, then said, “I’d like to hire you to investigate him.”

  I sipped my tea while I thought about that idea.

  “I can give you the name of a good private investigation agency,” I said. “They’ll do the job better than I can.”

  “I don’t need his life story. I just want to know enough to be sure that my mother isn’t hooking up with some questionable character.”

  “A private investigator is your best bet.”

  “I want somebody who has Mom’s interests at heart. I don’t want to hire some stranger. I don’t even know where John Reilley lives, for crying out loud.”

  “Zee and I just mentioned that the other day.”

  “You, too? Don’t you think it’s funny that none of us know where he lives?”

  “I don’t know where most people live, but it’s generally not too hard to find out. The easiest way is just to ask him or look in the phone book.”

  “He doesn’t have a phone, but Mom says he told her he lives just over the West Tisbury line, off North Road.”

  “Don’t you believe him?”

  “I drove up there and couldn’t find a mailbox with his name on it.”

  “A lot of people don’t have mailboxes. He probably gets his mail at the PO.”

  “Then I went up to the town hall in West Tisbury. They don’t have any records about him. He’s not on the tax rolls or the voting rolls or anywhere else.” She frowned over her cup of tea.

  “It sounds like you’re already doing what you want me to do.”

  “I have to work and, besides, you can do it better. You were a policeman.”

  “I wore a uniform. I wasn’t a detective. If you want to know what sort of guy he is, you should talk with the people he works with and with his friends.”

  “I don’t know his friends or where he works.”

  Just to be sure, I got up and got the phone book. There was no John Reilley listed in the book. I called directory information and learned that the operator knew of no listing for a John Reilley.

  A minor mystery. I felt my curiosity rise as I listened to the rain. Maria’s face showed genuine worry.

  “I can pay you a little,” she said.

  “No, you can’t,” I said, making my decision. “All right, I’ll see what I can dig up. I know John well enough to talk to him. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  She looked only barely less worried than before, but put a smile on her face. “Thank you. I just want to be sure that Mom isn’t going to get hurt.”

  There is no avoiding hurt. To live is to suffer, as the Buddha observed.

  “We’ll try to keep that from happening,” I said.

  She got into her wet raincoat and went out into the storm, running to her car as the wind tugged at her umbrella.

  When she was gone I thought about John Reilley. I’d once worked briefly with him on a job. He was about sixty years old and had been on the island for a while, supporting himself by working as a carpenter either alone or on various construction crews. He always rode a moped with his toolbox lashed behind the seat.

  He was a lean man of medium height who worked with great economy of energy, never seeming to exert himself or hurry, yet always getting the job done in that graceful, aesthetic way of all people who are good at their jobs. He had sharp eyes and walked easily and smoothly in spite of his accumulating years.

  He favored camouflage clothing, wearing green tints in the summer and brown and white in the winter. Why, I could not guess, but sartorial sensitivity is not one of my strengths, as my thrift shop duds clearly indicate.

  If he had friends, I didn’t know who they were, but I didn’t think it would be hard to find them or anything else about John that Maria might want to know. John had been on the island for some time, after all, and nobody lives anywhere that long without becoming known to at least some people. It was just a matter of finding them.

  But it was too wet and cold to go out hunting them right then. Instead, I went back to the phone book. I realized as I did that I enjoyed nosing around in other people’s business, and the realization made me a little uneasy. But not uneasy enough to stop snooping. I opened the book.

  8

  I talked with people in the town halls of all of the Vineyard’s six villages. It took quite a while, and when I was through I knew that John Reilley paid no local taxes on the island and was not registered to vote.

  I tried the registry of motor vehicles. John didn’t own a car. No surprise there; you don’t need a license to drive a moped.

  I tried the post offices in the various towns and finally learned something. John had a box in the Vineyard Haven PO. That was helpful because in order to get a PO box you have to have an address that the post office people can verify. The problem was that the PO won’t give you the address of one of its customers unless you have a legit reason to get it, such as a warrant or a summons. I had neither, of course, but I had something even better: a PO employee for whom I’d once done an invaluable favor. I had taken her fishing and she’d nailed a thirty-pound bass. She owed me a lot, and paid me with the address.

  I didn’t have high expectations of benefiting from this information because, according to my source, John had gotten his box years before. But sometimes things work out, so I got into a heavy sweater and my foul-weather gear and drove to Vineyard Haven. I needed the sweater because the heater in my old Land Cruiser doesn’t work too well.

  The address John had given the PO was an upstairs apartment just off State Road in one of the village’s less attractive neighborhoods. I climbed the outside staircase, ducking against the rain, and knocked at the door.

  After a while, a woman pee
ked at me through the window and decided I was trusty-looking enough to risk opening the door. She looked tired, and behind her I could hear a baby crying. I told her I was looking for John Reilley. She said she had never heard of him. I asked her how long she’d lived there and she said since last fall. I asked her if it was a winter rental and she said yes and that she and her family had to get out by June. When she said that, her voice was sad and angry but resigned.

  It was a familiar situation on the island. You can get a winter rental fairly cheaply, but you have to leave in late spring so the landlord can rent the place for a fortune during the summer, when people will pay anything to stay on Martha’s Vineyard. This place looked like the kind that college kids would rent while they worked and played between semesters. Three or four of them would officially rent the apartment, then another dozen would move in and share the expenses. They would all find jobs and promise to stay at them until Labor Day, but in mid-August they would quit so they could spend the last two weeks of the summer enjoying sun, surf, sand, and sex before heading back to school.

  I asked her for the landlord’s name and address.

  She gave me a curious look. “You going to rent this dump?”

  “No. I’m just trying to find John Reilley.”

  “He in some kind of trouble? You some kind of cop?”

  “He isn’t in any trouble that I know of. He used to live here, and I’d like to find him. It’s just a personal matter.”

  She gave me the landlord’s name and address and I walked back down the stairs through the rain.

  The landlord was a realtor who had an office on Main Street. Since it was March I actually found a parking space not far away.

  In the office I learned that John Reilley hadn’t lived in the apartment for years. He’d rented it for one winter then moved out in June. The people in the office had no idea where he lived now.

  I walked up to the Vineyard Haven National Bank and went into Hazel Fine’s office. Hazel was wearing bankers’ clothes adorned with a simple lapel pin in the shape of a scallop shell. Her dark hair looked newly cut and shaped. She rose, smiling, when I peeked in her door.

  “J.W.! Come in. How’s the family?”

  “Everybody’s fine. Both kids are in school, Zee’s at the hospital, and I’m the only one with time to wander around and interrupt bankers at work. I can see that you’re doing well. How’s Mary?”

  Hazel and Mary Coffin had lived together for years in a house within walking distance of the bank. They were a happy, creative pair who had played Baroque music at Zee’s and my wedding. Hazel was my contact with the world of banking and finance, about which I knew next to nothing and would never know more, being afflicted with the equivalency of color blindness with regard to money. I just didn’t get it.

  Hazel waved me to a chair. “Mary’s just fine and you always were good at avoiding steady work. So Joshua and Diana are both in school. Boy, time does fly, doesn’t it? What brings you out in this weather? You need a loan?”

  “No, I’m too cheap to need a loan. I never buy anything that costs enough for me to have to borrow money. What I want is an opinion and some information.”

  “I’m strong on opinion. Let’s start there.”

  “What do you think of this business with Donald Fox? Is he actually going to be able to get his hands on island properties by doing what he’s doing?”

  She put her slender fingers together. “Did he make an offer on your place?”

  “His agent did. Albert Kirkland, the guy who got himself killed behind the Fireside a couple of days back.”

  She frowned. “Does that put you on the suspect list?”

  I shrugged. “I think everybody’s on the list right now.”

  “Did Kirkland make the usual pitch? An offer to buy your place for a quarter of what it’s worth and a threat to take it for even less if you don’t sell?”

  “That’s the normal Saberfox MO, as I understand it. Is it a legit business practice?”

  She allowed herself a thin smile. “Legit business practices are any practices that work, as far as the businessmen who practice them are concerned. Sometimes the courts take a different view, but as far as I know Donald Fox is doing just fine. He’s got more high-powered lawyers than the federal government and they’ve fended off everybody who’s had the nerve to think about suing Fox.”

  “My impression is that he always bluffs first.”

  “I think that’s right. He stays away from people with as much money and as many lawyers as he has, but he comes on strong and tries to scare normal people into selling. When that works, it saves him both money and time. But if it doesn’t work, he puts his people to work on old land-sale records. Sometimes they find enough mistakes to get their hands on property, and in a place like this island, where land is worth more than gold, he’s going to make some money. He’s smart.”

  “And legal.”

  She shrugged. “So far nobody’s been able to prove that he isn’t. I hope for your sake that your deeds are good.”

  Me, too. Maybe I should get in touch with Brady Coyne, up in Boston, I mused. Paperwork for rich clients was his specialty. I wasn’t rich, but I could probably tempt him to check out my deeds by offering him a fishing weekend in late May, when the bluefish would be in. Brady had an incurable addiction to fly-fishing.

  I said, “The information I need is about a guy named John Reilley. I’d like to know if he has a bank account on the island.”

  She looked at me, then shook her head. “Would you want a bank to tell people if you had an account there? Then what would be next, your account number?”

  “I know there’s a way to find out,” I said. “I just don’t know what it is.” I felt a smile on my face. “I take it you’re not it.”

  She smiled back. “Sorry, J.W. I will tell you this, though, just for old times’ sake. John Reilley doesn’t have an account at Vineyard Haven National. I know who John is, and I’ve never seen him in here.”

  “Well, that narrows the field a little, anyway.”

  “Try some of your shady friends. One of them might know somebody with that sort of information.”

  “I don’t have any shady friends. I only have some friends who don’t talk much about what they do.”

  “Like me, in this case.” She laughed and I left.

  It was past noon and I was hungry, so I walked through the windy rain down to the E and E Deli for lunch. The boy behind the counter was the same one who’d been there when Paul Fox had gotten himself shot. He gave me a nervous look and an excellent sandwich.

  While I ate it I wondered if John Reilley came in here often, and if so, why. Did he live nearby? When I finished the sandwich I went back to the counter and asked the boy if John Reilley was a steady customer.

  “Who’s John Reilley?” he asked.

  I described John and said that he’d been there the day of the shooting. The kid didn’t remember him.

  I drove to Edgartown, my windshield wipers slapping time just like in “Bobby McGee.” I parked right in front of the courthouse and went inside. John Reilley had never been arrested or done anything else to get his name on official records.

  Saint John.

  I drove to the police station and went into the Chief’s office. He was busy with papers. I pointed at his computer. “I thought those things were going to eliminate the need for paper and file cabinets and all that sort of thing.”

  “Ha! I have more paperwork now than I did before. I have to keep backup records of everything in case the computer goes down. If the damned computer goes down, the whole world stops. You’re smart not to have one in spite of what people say about your brain.”

  I sat down across from him. “I’m trying to find out where John Reilley lives. You ever do any business with him?”

  “You’re dripping on my floor. I know who John Reilley is. He rides that moped everywhere, summer and winter. But he’s never come to our attention, as the papers sometimes say. He must live somewh
ere, but I don’t know where. Doesn’t he work for Connell and Carlson, building some of these castles people are putting up nowadays?”

  “I guess I’ll try to catch him at work.”

  “That’s more than anybody will ever be able to do if they’re looking for you. How’s the family?”

  “The family is fine, including the cats. John Reilley is a hard guy to find.”

  “I wish I was,” said the Chief, giving me a steady look. “People interrupt me here all the time. Please don’t tell me that you’ve got your nose in this Saberfox affair, because we already have some company vigilantes telling us how to do our business. A couple of them know for sure that Rick Black took that shot at Paul Fox and they’re mad as wet hens because we haven’t already arrested him. They don’t think we’ve even got him on the suspect list. I swear I’m going to quit this job and move to Nova Scotia.”

  He’d been saying that for years. I left him to his pile of papers and went dripping back out into the wind and rain.

  9

  The weather was the kind that kept contractors from doing outside work, so my chances of spotting John Reilley before he spotted me were pretty slim. To find him I’d probably have to go inside whatever mansion he was helping to build and that would tip him off that I was snooping.

  So I went home and phoned Connell and Carlson’s office.

  “I’ve just bought a piece of property on Edgartown harbor,” I said to the woman who answered. “I plan to take the place down and rebuild, and your firm has been recommended to me. If this weather ever clears I’d like to take a look at some of the projects you’re working on. Nothing formal, just a look to get an idea about your work. If I like it, I’ll get back to you. You have anything being built right now?”

  Of course they did, and she told me where. In return, she got my name, Quincy Adams, a fictitious Connecticut phone number (I was only on the island for a couple of days this trip), and my reassurances that if I liked what I saw at the building site I’d be by to talk to someone in the office.