A Vineyard Killing

by Philip R. Craig

  “No. No dogs. We have cats.”

  “If we had a little dog, she could play with the cats.”

  “No. Especially no little dog! When I’m king of the world I’m banning all small dogs. I thought I’d told you that.”

  “Ah, Pa. All our friends have dogs!”

  “Then you can go play with their dogs. See, Oliver Underfoot and Velcro agree with me.”

  We all looked at the cats, who unmistakably did side with me on the dog issue.

  “I don’t think they agree with you,” said Diana. “I think they agree with Joshua and me.” She grinned a wicked little grin just like her mother’s and put her arms around my leg. “Please, Pa!”

  I held firm. “No. No dogs, and that’s final. Now, wash up and come to dinner.”

  It was a pretty silent meal but it all got eaten.

  The next morning, Maria Donawa stopped on her way to work and gave me a plastic bag containing the mug that her mother had identified as the one John Reilley traditionally used for coffee.

  “Here,” she said. “By the time I get home tonight Mom will miss it.”

  “Tell her you don’t know where it is.”

  “I don’t like lying to her.”

  “You won’t be lying because you won’t know where it is or what happened to it.”

  “All right. I just hope this is important.”

  “I’ll let you know. Thanks for bringing it by.”

  She looked unhappy but went on to work.

  Zee and the kids were also headed out, to the hospital and to school respectively. Only unemployed me had no obligation to be anywhere except where I wanted to be. I wanted to be in Aquinnah, so that’s where I went, after making a phone call to make sure that Joe Begay would be home.

  Aquinnah was known for hundreds of years as Gay Head but now once again officially possessed the name given to the area by the Wampanoags, who were living there long before the Europeans arrived. It is the Vineyard’s westernmost township, and is the site of the wonderful colored clay cliffs that had given the place its English name. It is a lovely little town, geographically, and is famous for the striped bass that many a surf caster has caught there.

  It is, alas, also known for its convoluted town politics, second only to those of Oak Bluffs as a subject of laughter for the citizens of the rest of the island, and for ripping off the tourists who come by the carload and busload to enjoy its beaches and the lovely cliffs.

  There are NO PARKING signs along every road, so fishermen can no longer haunt the beaches as of yore; the town parking lot charges hapless drivers an arm and a leg; and, worst of all, the only toilets in town cost fifty cents a flush. Pay toilets are an abomination in the eyes of man and God at all times, but particularly when their users are trapped, tight-bladdered, elderly tourists unloaded from buses. I happily bad-mouth Aquinnah whenever given the chance and only go there to visit friends who have yards where I can park for free.

  One of these was Joe Begay, who was married to Toni, Zee’s friend and one of the town’s Vander-beck women. Joe himself was raised in Oraibi, on the Hopi reservation, but was now settled on the Vineyard. Most of the time, anyway. Now and then he went off to Washington or elsewhere to do something for the gray-and-black-ops organization from which he was supposedly retired.

  I never asked him about his work and he never talked much about it, but I’d known him since he’d been my sergeant long ago in Vietnam, and in the years since then had come to trust him to have useful contacts. Because he claimed I’d saved his life, he sometimes did me favors. Since I believed that he’d been the one who had saved my life, I tried not to take advantage of our friendship. But this was a time when I would if I could.

  Joe and Toni lived just north of the cliffs. A sandy path led from their place to the beach, from which you could look out toward Devil’s Bridge, where, over a century before, the City of Columbus had come to grief and spewed frozen bodies all along the Vineyard’s western shores.

  I parked in front of the house and he opened the door as I crossed the porch.

  “Come in and get warm. I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to this New England cold weather. Out where I come from the air is dry and you can walk around when it’s below zero. Here I seize up when it gets below thirty.”

  “It ain’t the heat, it’s the humidity, like they say.”

  Joe Begay was tall and big in the chest but was a lot smaller in the hips. There was a scar on his forehead from a shrapnel wound that had blinded him for a while and later made his eyes so sensitive to light that he now almost always wore dark glasses during the day. Shrapnel from that same blast had left a lot of interesting scars on my legs. For both of us it had been the end of active duty in that war and the beginning of long stays in hospitals.

  Now he handed me a cup of coffee and waved at a chair.

  I gave him the plastic bag I’d brought and sat down. He peeked inside the bag.

  “It’s a coffee cup,” I said. “I think it’s got finger-prints on it, probably at least two sets. The woman is Dodie Donawa, who lives here on the island. The man calls himself John Reilley. I’d like to know if his prints belong to any other name, and if they do I’d like to know as much about him as I can. It’s possible that he killed a man forty years ago, maybe near New Orleans or some other place down South.”

  Begay closed the bag and picked up his own cup. “What’s this Reilley guy to you? You on a job of some kind, or just sticking your nose where it may not belong?”

  “I’m doing a favor for a friend who wants to know if Reilley is the sweet guy her mother thinks he is. I told her I’d try to check him out.”

  “The daughter seems right to be suspicious, if you think he killed somebody. What makes you think he did?”

  “He told me.”

  “Did he, now? Most people don’t admit to that sort of thing.” A small smile played across Begay’s broad face.

  “I got the impression he was glad to get it off his chest,” I said. I told him about Reilley’s underground house.

  Begay raised a brow. “Do you believe him?”

  I shrugged. “I’d like to check him out.”

  “Well,” said Begay, “you’ve gotten me interested enough to make the effort. I’ll have to send this cup to somebody, and it’ll be a couple of days before I can get back to you.”

  “Fine.” I sat back. “How are Toni and the tots?”

  “The kids are in school, and Toni’s up on the cliffs getting the shop ready for summer. Nowadays tourists start coming by in May. The season’s getting longer every year.”

  “More money for all you original Americans.”

  Toni Begay’s shop on the top of the cliffs, like others there and elsewhere on the island, carries souvenirs of Martha’s Vineyard that are made in China. Unlike most of the other Aquinnah shops, hers also carries crafts that really were made by Indians, some of them actual Wampanoags. After the busloads of elderly tourists first spend their fifty-cent pieces at the town toilets down the hill, they spend more at the shops up the hill. Toni gets her share.

  “And how are things down at the east end of Paradise?” asked Begay. “Is Mr. Fox still terrifying the locals?”

  “Don’t be so superior,” I said. “Just because Fox isn’t after your place doesn’t mean he won’t be here next.”

  “Not a chance,” said Begay. “The white eyes already stole almost all the land belonging to us offi-cially recognized original Americans. Now the government is on our side. Washington is so embarrassed about the Indian wars that now it’ll defend our sacred soil against all comers, including Fox, and Fox is smart enough to know it.”

  I knew he was right. “How come all the land the local Wampanoags own or want is sacred?” I asked, just to be ornery.

  He smiled. “That’s easy. All of it is worth a lot of money, and my wife’s people are Native Americans, and to an American nothing is more sacred than money.”

  “You win the box of Mars bars,” I said.
“I have no more questions.”

  17

  In Chilmark I pulled off Middle Road into the driveway that led to the house that John Reilley was working on, parked out of sight, and walked up to a place where I could see who was there. By and by I spotted Rick Black move in and out of view. I was glad that he seemed to have recovered from the blow he’d taken. A bit later John Reilley came out of a doorway, picked up a circular saw, and returned inside. I went back to my car and, after making sure that no one was following me, drove to the state forest, where I parked in the lot fronting the official but currently empty Frisbee golf range.

  I’ve never played Frisbee golf, but I was glad there was a course for those who do. I got my pocket flashlight, zipped my down vest, and walked out on the range. Then, after again checking to make sure no one was observing me, I cut into the woods.

  The trees were still bare of leaves, so I could see farther than would be the case during the summer. Even so, there wasn’t a lot to see. I picked my way through the forest, making a big circle and stopping now and then to glance back over my trail. No tailing Indians or Daniel Boones were in evidence, so I went on until I came to the cellar hole that contained the door to John Reilley’s house. I gave a final 360-degree examination of the empty forest, saw no one, and dropped down into the depression.

  Years before I had found a set of lock picks on a yard sale table, and had bought them for a dollar from the widow who was selling her late husband’s possessions and who, I was sure, had no idea what they were. I’d wondered at the time what he had done for a living, but I hadn’t asked. Now the picks were in my pocket, but, as it turned out, I didn’t need them.

  John, I reasoned, would not have a metal lock on his door because it would too easily be seen. Rather, the door would be fastened shut in some simple but unobtrusive way. I studied the apparent jumble of boards that made up the door, then began to run my hands behind them.

  After a short time, voilà! I found a knob of wood and pushed it and turned it until, silently, the door opened. I followed my flashlight inside and shut the door behind me, then flipped on the electrical switch I’d spotted on my earlier visit. The house filled with light.

  The room was just as I’d left it. I studied its walls but saw no photographs. I crossed to a bookcase and examined the books it contained. No ex libris names were to be found. A couple of the books were in Spanish, though, indicating that John read at least one more language than I did.

  I went through a low doorway into the kitchen, where I opened every cabinet door and drawer. No diamonds were hidden in the ice cubes, none of the cookbooks had a name scribbled inside the binding. A closet held a box of paper bags from the A&P, cleaning supplies and tools, and odds and ends of household stuff you just might need some day. Exactly the contents of my kitchen closet and maybe everybody’s kitchen closet.

  I went down a narrow hallway and found a ladder that led upward. I went up the ladder, passing cables holding metal weights as I went. At the top there was a hinged metal hatch, and I realized that the weights and cables formed some sort of counterbalance to the weight of the hatch. The latch seemed to be the kind that could be unfastened from both inside and out. I loosened it and pushed the hatch up. It rose easily. I contented myself with opening it only a few inches so I could look out. I seemed to be on the far side of the tree beyond a patch of greenbrier where Reilley secreted his moped when he was at home. I took some bearings and lowered the hatch and fastened it. A rear door is often handy.

  I went back to the kitchen and went into what turned out to be Reilley’s bedroom. It was small but comfortable, with a single bed, a chair and desk, a bureau with a mirror, more bookcases, and a long curtain across the far end that covered a closet. An adjoining alcove contained a chemical toilet, a wash-basin, and a small shower stall that looked like it had originally been made for a boat. I doubted if Reilley used the shower much, since he had to pack in all of his water, and recalled his comment that he showered in the houses he helped build.

  I went through all of the drawers in the bureau and the desk and found nothing that might tell me more about John Reilley: no letters, no diary, no memoirs, no ladies’ underwear. There was a bank-book from an off-island bank. John Reilley had a couple of thousand dollars there. The address on the book was John’s PO box number in Vineyard Haven.

  I lifted the mattress and looked under the bed. No goblins, no trolls, no nothing.

  I leafed through the books. No names, no perfumed notes between the pages, no bookmarks from bookstores in New Orleans.

  John Reilley had left no paper trail. A careful guy. I liked his taste in books, though. Good stuff. No junk except maybe for some paperback Western novels written by guys with manly sounding names. I didn’t have time to read any of them, so they might have been good, too.

  I looked in every closet and cubbyhole and found nothing of interest.

  I left the house as I’d found it, turned off the lights, peeked out the peephole to make sure nobody was outside, locked the door behind me, and walked around to the far side of the tree where John kept his moped.

  It took me a while to spot the location of the rear exit’s hatch. It was a rotten-looking stump. I thought about the location of the latch inside, and found the outside latch under a lichen-covered rock that looked as if it hadn’t been moved in years. When I worked the latch, the stump tipped back, revealing the hole beneath. I pushed it shut and replaced the rock, then went out of the woods a different way than I’d come in and walked back along the empty bike path to my truck.

  As I drove home I thought about the shooting and what had happened since. The shots had been long ones for a pistol, and the shooter hadn’t come close to hitting Donald Fox.

  So he wasn’t much of a marksman.

  Or maybe he was. He’d put two bullets close together right over Paul Fox’s heart.

  When I got to the house I called Dom Agganis.

  “Any new news?” I asked.

  “None of your business,” said Dom. “Okay, I’ll tell you this much: some guy going into the Black Dog heard the shots and thinks he saw a man run out of sight toward that place that makes the wooden boats.”

  “Gannon and Benjamin.”

  “Whatever. Anyway, the hungry guy says the other guy went off in that direction. He didn’t see a gun.”

  “Any description?”

  “The useless kind. Winter clothes, medium height, medium build, no distinguishing characteristics.”

  I’d learned one thing: Agganis wasn’t a wooden boat man. If he had been, he’d have known that Gannon and Benjamin was a yard that does fine work building and repairing only wooden boats.

  “Anybody at the boatyard see anything?” I asked.

  “No,” said Agganis. “My own guess is that the guy was probably walking by then and didn’t attract any attention. I figure he had a car out by the road somewhere.”

  “That’s why I called,” I said. “You might check around and see if anybody saw one of those green Range Rovers parked someplace nearby. Maybe somebody even saw the guy get into it and drive away.”

  I could imagine Dom’s eyes becoming hooded. “Why do you say that? You know something?”

  “It’s just that I think it’s possible that the shooter was tied to Saberfox.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re just guessing, then.”

  “It’s a little more than a guess.” I told him about Reston and Wall. “Donald Fox seemed pretty surprised and angry when I told him about them following me,” I said. “Something’s going on in the company that the big boss says he doesn’t know about.”

  Dom was silent for a minute, then said, “Anything else?”

  “One more question. Did you find Kirkland’s laptop computer in his car or in his house?”

  Dom’s ears seemed to go up. “What laptop computer?”

  “Kirkland had a laptop computer when he came to our house. He carried it instead of a bri
efcase. If you found it, you might check it out in case Kirkland recorded something that could shed some light on this case. Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Well, did you find his computer?”

  “No. Maybe he kept it at the company office when he wasn’t on the road.”

  “Maybe. Will you let me know?”

  “Maybe. I’ll tell you one thing that might interest you. I took a photo of Kirkland down to the Fireside and showed it to Bonzo. He ID’ed the guy he saw in the Range Rover as Kirkland.”

  “Another mystery solved.”

  “Every little bit helps. Right now I think I’ll run down to Saberfox’s office and ask some questions. Maybe I’ll run into Paul Fox and he’ll tell me what I want to know. His big brother won’t say a word without his lawyer standing beside him, and that receptionist is just as bad.”

  “Can I come along?”

  “No.” He hung up.

  Rejected once again. Maybe it was my breath. But I didn’t mind because I already had something to do.

  18

  Rick Black wasn’t listed in the phone book, and directory assistance informed me that his number was unlisted. Secretive Rick.

  But I had a source of information. I called Dodie Donawa and learned not only Rick’s telephone number but also that he lived on Oak Lane in West Tisbury. Dodie didn’t know just where on Oak Lane, but that was no problem. I called the West Tisbury police station, identified myself as a lost driver for FedEx with a package to deliver to Richard Black, who lived somewhere on Oak Lane. The helpful police officer told me which house was Rick’s.

  Oak Lane is a long street that leads southeast off Old County Road. Some of its houses are the summer kind, which are empty during the rest of the year. Rick Black’s place was a small, fairly new house on the left. I drove by slowly and took a good look at it for signs of activity. I saw none, then had a bit of good luck in that the next place down the road was one of those empty summerhouses.

  I parked in the driveway of the summerhouse, put on a pair of tight rubber gloves, palmed my lock picks, and walked back to Black’s house. I’m not the world’s champion lock picker, but then Rick Black’s doors didn’t have world champion locks on them, so after knocking and having no one answer, I was inside in short order.