A Vineyard Killing

by Philip R. Craig

  The quicker the better, advised the woman. Business was booming and more orders were coming in all the time. Did I want someone to meet me at the site?

  I said no, because my schedule was tight and I didn’t know yet when I’d be free, but if she’d advise the foreman that I hoped to come by in the next two days, I’d appreciate it.

  She understood perfectly.

  The house was being built on a Chilmark hill off Middle Road. I drove through the rain and found the lane leading up to the site. There were other large summer houses along the road, both below and above the new construction. I loafed past the parked pickups of the workmen and the Connell and Carlson trucks and vans and saw that the new house was going to be a beauty, with no expense spared. Just like the place Quincy Adams was going to build in Edgartown.

  Better yet, I saw a moped with a box behind the seat leaning against a tree. Clearly a little rain did not stay John Reilley from using his bike to get to and from work.

  I turned around in a driveway up the hill from the construction site and drove back. In a driveway near Middle Road I found a place where I could park and wait pretty much out of sight of anyone coming down the hill.

  But not today. I had other duties to perform and drove home to do them. By the time the kids came sloshing down the driveway, kicking pools of water as they came, I had warm cocoa and cookies waiting and supper, a seafood casserole, ready for the oven.

  I got them out of their rain gear and put them in front of the fire to warm up while they snacked and gave me their reports of their day. School didn’t seem to have changed much from when I was a kid their age.

  “Pa?”

  “What?”

  “Can we go out and play in the rain?”

  “No, not today. Today you play inside.”

  “Aw, Pa!”

  I pointed to the sign above the kitchen door.

  “What does that say?”

  “‘No sniveling.’ But we’re not sniveling.”

  “You’re getting ready to. No, today is an indoor day. Do you have any homework?”

  “No. Can we watch television?”

  “What’s on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can watch for one hour.”

  As far as I knew, we had the only black-and-white TV on Martha’s Vineyard, or maybe in the whole world. Zee and I watched Red Sox games sometimes, so I couldn’t argue when Joshua and Diana wanted to watch something for an hour. I didn’t care what they watched and rarely had to advise them that their hour was up, since they were usually bored by then.

  They had abandoned the tube and the three of us were on the floor playing Crazy Eights by the time Zee came home, shrugged out of her raincoat, and gave her children and me kisses. After she changed into other clothes, she joined us in the game. Crazy Eights is one of those games that can be played just as well by kids as by grown-ups, and is far better entertainment than television. The cats lay on the rug watching us. It was quality family time.

  After taking a beating from my children, I left the game, put the casserole in the oven, got the vodka out of the freezer, and filled two glasses. Two olives per glass, black ones for Zee, green ones stuffed with peppers for me, completed the drinks. She, too, then abandoned the game and while we sipped the drinks in front of the fire and watched Joshua and Diana battle it out on the floor, I told her what Maria Donawa had asked me to do and about my day since then.

  “Well,” said Zee, “I suppose I might want to protect my mother, too. Do you really think John Reilley might be a gigolo or even dangerous?”

  “He’s never done anything to attract the attention of the local police. People who cause trouble usually do.”

  “What are you going to do next?”

  “I thought I might follow him home tomorrow, just to see where he lives. He has to live somewhere, but nobody knows where. So far, in fact, nobody knows much about him at all.”

  “But he’s been on the island for quite a while, hasn’t he? Somebody must know about him. Why don’t you just ask him about himself?”

  “Dodie asked him where he lives, but when Maria tried to check out the address, she couldn’t find it. I don’t think Maria wants her mother or him to know she’s checking up on him. By tomorrow night I should know where he lives, at least.”

  “I’ll leave work early tomorrow, so I’ll be here when the tots get home. That’ll give you time to play detective.”

  I put my arm around her. “What more can a man ask than the love of a good woman?”

  “How about the love of a bad one?” she asked, putting a grasping hand in a delicate spot.

  “You’re right!” I said in falsetto.

  “What did you say, Pa?”

  “Nothing, Diana.”

  The next day was cold but clear, and about four in the afternoon I made a fruitless stop at Dodie’s house just in case John had stopped by for tea. He hadn’t, and a half hour later I was parked in the hidden driveway in Chilmark reading Velikovsky, who had written my car book, and waiting for the work gang to leave the half-built house up the hill.

  A dark green Range Rover went up the lane. Was that a Saberfox car, or was it carrying someone else who made more money than most of the carpenters on the job?

  Just as I got to the part of Velikovsky’s book where the Earth is first brushed by the tail of Venus, vehicles began to come down the lane. I put the book in the door pocket and started my engine.

  After a few minutes John Reilley passed by on his moped and I let a pickup go by before easing out behind him. At the foot of the lane John and the pickup turned left and headed for West Tisbury. I trailed along with yet other trucks and cars behind me. The narrow, up-island roads are not conducive to passing, so we wound along head to tail like a mother duck and her ducklings.

  In West Tisbury, John and the pickup headed toward Edgartown. That was interesting because John had told Dodie that he lived near the Vineyard Haven–West Tisbury line.

  Maybe he was going shopping in Edgartown before he went home.

  But instead of going to Edgartown, he turned left on Airport Road and putted along toward the blinker. The pickup that had been between us went straight on, but a line of oncoming cars from Edgartown kept me from turning left and following the moped. When I finally managed it, John was far ahead and there were several cars between us.

  That would have been fine, but then one of the cars in front of me was held up by more oncoming traffic before making a left turn into the industrial park. By the time my line of cars got going again, John was out of sight.

  Blad dast it! When I’m king of the world I’m banning all left turns.

  When I finally got to the blinker John was still out of sight. I had three choices: right to Edgartown, where a cold-looking hitchhiker was trying to thumb a ride, left to Vineyard Haven, or straight ahead to Oak Bluffs. Since John could have gone to either Edgartown or Vineyard Haven by shorter routes than this one, I went toward Oak Bluffs, following Barnes Road.

  With me hurrying and John on a moped, I figured I should catch up with him, but John did not come into view.

  Hmmmm.

  I turned around at the fire department and drove back to the blinker. The hitchhiker was still there, looking colder than ever. I pulled over to him and stopped. He opened the door and got in.

  “Thanks, buddy. I thought I was going to freeze my ass off out there.”

  “The first rule of hitching is that nobody owes you a ride. How long have you been here?”

  “Half hour, maybe.”

  “You see a moped go by, coming from the airport?”

  “Nah. Too cold for mopeds. Summer is moped time.”

  “Where you headed?”

  “Edgartown. I got a room there. Got to clear out of it in June, but it’s mine for now.”

  “I’ll take you to your door.”

  “Well, thanks, buddy. I appreciate that.”

  I drove him to his address, because I owed him that much, then we
nt back to the blinker. Somewhere between there and the industrial park John Reilley had turned off. I turned into the Deer Run development and followed its various streets, seeing no sign of the moped. Then I drove back to Airport Road and drifted slowly along looking for driveways. There weren’t too many, but when I found one I took it: houses but no mopeds.

  A lot of the land was state forest that contained bicycle paths and fire lanes but few buildings of any kind. Had John driven off on one of those paths? I pulled over and stopped and looked down one as far as I could see.

  No John was in sight.

  Mysteriouser and mysteriouser.

  I checked my rearview mirror to make sure I wouldn’t get run over when I pulled back onto the road. Back there a quarter of a mile or so was what looked like a green Range Rover parked by the side of the road.

  I drove toward the Edgartown–West Tisbury road. The green Range Rover pulled onto the highway and followed along. I turned toward Edgartown and a bit later saw that the Range Rover had done the same.

  I had a tail.

  10

  Just to be sure, I turned onto Metcalf Drive, drove a half mile or so, and stopped in front of a house. In jig time the Range Rover came around a corner behind me. It seemed to hesitate, then drove on by. The driver and passenger didn’t look at me, but I looked casually at them. They were both wearing ties.

  When the car was out of sight, I waited a few minutes, then drove on. Around the next corner I met it coming back. I gave it not a glance because I already had the license plate number and knew what the driver and passenger looked like. The plate was from Georgia.

  I wondered how long I’d been followed and why Saberfox was interested in me. The tail could have been there from the time I’d left home and I just hadn’t been paying attention. The first time I’d noticed a Range Rover was when I’d seen that one headed up the road to the work site, but maybe that wasn’t the occupants’ first sight of me.

  There’s a small traffic circle where Metcalf Drive joins Dodgers Hole Road. I went around the circle and parked facing back toward Metcalf Drive. Sure enough, the Range Rover soon came along. I was fairly sure that its occupants were not pleased to see me waiting for them, but they had little choice but to keep driving. When the car entered the traffic circle I followed after it, the tailed now tailing the tailer.

  The car’s occupants, sure now that they’d been spotted, sped off ahead of me along Dodgers Hole Road. Their new car could certainly outrun my old one, but there are several speed bumps on Dodgers Hole Road, so they beat up their vehicle a bit as they fled. Some day I’d like a Range Rover of my own, but at that time I took pleasure in the damage they were doing to theirs as I watched them pull away from me. By the time I got to the Vineyard Haven–Edgartown road the Range Rover was not to be seen.

  I drove to the State Police barracks and no one followed me. I found Dom Agganis at his desk.

  “I’m seeing a lot of you lately,” he said. “To what do I owe this particular honor?”

  I told him about my day and asked him to verify my guess that the Range Rover belonged to Saberfox. He checked and it did. “You want me to find out why Saberfox is tailing you?” he asked.

  “I plan to ask them that myself. I just thought you might want to know it was happening. But you’ll be remembered in my will if you can tell me where John Reilley lives. He slipped my noose.”

  He leaned back. “Why are you looking for John Reilley? I hope you’re not nosing around in police business. Like that shooting in Vineyard Haven, for instance.”

  I put a hand on my heart. “Heaven forbid,” I said, and told him about Maria Donawa’s concerns.

  “Well, that explains your interest in John. Why do you suppose Fox is so interested in you?”

  I’d been thinking about that. “He knows where I live, so I don’t think it’s me that interests him. My best guess is that he wants me to lead him to somebody else.”

  He nodded. “Who?”

  “I’d think it was John Reilley except that there’s no reason for Fox to believe I’d lead him to John. But I don’t know who else it could be.”

  “How many people know you’re looking for John?”

  “Not too many. Maria Donawa, Zee, Hazel Fine, and a couple of others.”

  Dom stretched his heavy arms and wiggled his thick fingers in a sort of mini exercise routine. “Well, you know the saying: two can keep a secret if one of them is dead. Maybe one of the ladies told a friend who told a friend and so forth.”

  “Yeah, it could be. Now, how about telling me where John lives, so I can save myself a lot of time and energy.”

  Dom put his hands together and cracked his knuckles. It was a talent I did not possess. “I hate to destroy my reputation for omniscience,” he said, “but I have to admit that I don’t know where John Reilley hangs his hat.”

  We considered that fact in silence for a while.

  “There’s a curious lack of information about John,” I said finally.

  “Indeed,” Dom agreed. “Nothing illegal about living a very private life, of course.”

  “Nothing at all.” I stood up. “Anything new on the Kirkland killing or the shot at Paul Fox?”

  “The investigations are proceeding, as we say in the police biz.”

  “Any arrests imminent?”

  “When I was a kid I always got imminent, immanent, and eminent mixed up. That ever happen to you?”

  “Constantly. I take it that’s a no.”

  “You take it correctly. Keep in touch. All of this may tie together.”

  I went home and nobody followed me. I told Zee what I’d told Dom.

  “If you want to find out where John Reilley lives,” she said, “tomorrow morning go up there where you lost him and park yourself someplace where you can see the road. When he goes to work, you’ll see where he comes from.”

  Smart Zee.

  “Unless,” she added, “he actually lives somewhere else entirely.”

  Unless that, of course.

  She frowned. “I don’t like this business of people following you.”

  “I don’t even like me following John Reilley.”

  “I don’t either, but you’re doing Maria a favor. I don’t know what those Saberfox guys are up to. You be careful.”

  Early the next morning I drove back to Airport Road. No one followed me. Maybe I’d embarrassed them into staying home.

  I parked the Land Cruiser a hundred yards in on the entrance road that led to the state forest headquarters, walked back to Airport Road, and found a tree to lean against while I looked up and down the highway and watched early risers drive to wherever they were going. I was chilly and wishing that I’d remembered to bring a jug of coffee with me when I turned my head to look back toward the blinker and saw a moped coming toward me along the highway. I slid behind the tree and watched John Reilley go by, apparently headed back to work in Chilmark.

  I waited until he was well down the road, then got into the truck and drove slowly in the direction John had come from. I hadn’t see him emerge onto the blacktop, but he hadn’t been there just moments before, so I knew about where he had to have come out.

  The problem was that there wasn’t a road or path where he’d come onto the pavement. I turned around at the blinker and drove back, studying the ground and foliage.

  Nothing.

  Traffic was picking up as starting times approached for most working people. Unlike them I had no obligation to be anywhere. It was one advantage of not having a real job. A compensating disadvantage was that I also had little money. All in all I preferred the freedom to the cash, as did the hoboes looking for the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

  I parked beside the road and walked first on one side, then the other, looking at the ground for spoor as I’d been told the African trackers do when leading game walks and drives and as the American Indians and other hunters no doubt also do.

  I’m not Lew Wetzel or Trader Horn or Abraham Mahsimba, but I’m not blind
either. I had walked several hundred yards up the road and was coming back when I saw the track of the moped’s tires in a small patch of soft earth on the west side of the pavement.

  I looked in the direction the track had come from, then walked that way seeing hints of tire marks on the grass. Beyond the first line of trees and scrub oak a paved bike path paralleled the highway. On the other side of the bike path, where the real forest began, there were no tire tracks. Careful John Reilley had apparently driven along the bike path for a while before cutting out to the highway.

  I followed the bike path back toward the blinker but saw no sign of a moped track leading from the forest. Returning, I was almost opposite my parked truck when I finally saw where John had come out onto the path. His trail was faint and led from between two pine trees that would have hidden him from the view of anyone on the path or on the highway. John could study the public world for a while and enter it only when there was no one to see him do it.

  I looked into the forest. Many of the trees and bushes were still leafless, and I could look deep and see places I could never see in the summertime.

  I saw nothing related to human beings: no house, no shed, no half-fallen stone fence. A hundred years before, all this forest had been grassy grazing land for sheep and cattle, where farmers had walked and worked. Now it was wilderness.

  I went into the woods, moving slowly through scrub oak and blackjack pine, following what had now become a faint trail of moped tracks through the undergrowth. A hundred yards into the forest I looked back. The seemingly open woods had closed behind me and I could no longer see the highway. I turned and went on.

  I came to a lightning-blasted tree. Once large and tall, it was now a charred, splintered stump perhaps twenty feet high. I could almost smell the smoke from that ancient bolt of fire.

  Other stumps were in sight, these showing the markings of crosscut saws where loggers now long dead had timbered out the area before the current crop of oak and pine had grown in.

  On the far side of a small meadow there was what looked like an old cellar hole. I went there and looked down into it. Fallen stones half filled it, the remains of what had once been a foundation, and ancient, warped beams and boards lay tumbled among them. Such old foundations can be found all over the Vineyard, mute testaments to long-forgotten ambitions of island men and women.