A Vineyard Killing

by Philip R. Craig

Not much seemed to have been disturbed by the police, although the furnace had been turned down until it was just warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing.

  There were no business papers and there was no sign of his laptop computer.

  I pawed through the clothes in the closet and through those in the bedroom bureau. I found nothing of interest. I peeked under the mattress and rugs and opened every cabinet I could find.

  I looked through the refrigerator. Not much there. Kirkland, a lone male, apparently ate out instead of at home, as did many of his ilk. He could have saved himself some money and enjoyed some great meals if he’d learned how to cook. Too late now.

  I didn’t think the detectives had done much more detecting than I had. Why should they?

  But just to be sure, I pulled out the drawers of the bureaus and peeked under them and behind them before replacing them, and looked behind whatever furniture was backed against a wall. Nothing.

  Fine. Just because Kirkland had left no secret documents didn’t mean he couldn’t have left one in a place the cops hadn’t found because they had no reason to look hard enough. I was sorry that his computer was gone. The cryptic message I planned to write might have seemed more authentic if it had been typed on his laptop. Ah, well, it’s an imperfect world. The notepaper in the drawer of the bedside table would have to do.

  Using the ballpoint pen and printing in block letters I wrote the brief document I had in mind. I addressed it to Donald Fox, dated it the day of the shooting, and printed out Kirkland’s name at the bottom since I had never seen his signature. A poor fraud, but it would have to do. I folded the sheet, addressed it once more to Donald Fox, and taped it underneath a drawer of the bureau. An anonymous phone call to Fox should get the note into his hands, after which interesting things might happen.

  I searched my conscience for guilt and found none. If I was wrong I could straighten things out later; if I was right, a lot of pressure would be put on a murderer.

  I was going toward a window to check the emptiness of the street before leaving when the front door opened and Brad Hillborough limped in. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with March weather.

  He pointed his cane at me and said, “Hello, there, Mr. Jackson. Surprised to see me?”

  I was, but shouldn’t have been. “I really should learn to lock doors behind me,” I said. “I presume you’ve been talking with Paul Fox.”

  He looked around the room. “Yes. Little brother told me of your curiosity about Albert’s house. I didn’t believe the part about you only being interested in the distance from here to the Fireside parking lot. So here I am. Why are you really here?”

  I’d anticipated the question. “I can’t imagine why I should tell you that,” I said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.” I stepped toward the door.

  He pushed it shut behind him and put his back against it. His face was chiseled and his eyes were bright and cold. “I think the police will be interested in why you’ve broken in here. If you don’t explain your actions to me, you’ll certainly be obliged to explain to a judge and jury.”

  “I’ll be glad to do that,” I said. “I’ll tell them that I saw you break in and followed you to keep you from destroying evidence. I was just a citizen doing his best to prevent a crime.”

  He actually smiled. “And when I tell them the truth, who will they believe?”

  “We’ll find out, won’t we?” I stepped closer.

  He didn’t move. Instead he gripped his cane with both hands. The end of its handle was a solid knob of silver large enough, I thought, to brain anyone its wielder might want to brain. I wondered if his limp would slow him down enough to lessen the advantage the weapon gave him.

  I stopped. But even as he gripped the cane, he was thinking.

  “Why would I want to destroy evidence?” he asked. “What evidence?”

  A change in my plans instantly occurred. “I was about to find out when you came in,” I said. “I’ve looked in the obvious places and was about to look in the less obvious ones. The ones I suspect the police never investigated.”

  He was thoughtful. “What do you expect to find?”

  I shrugged. “Something about the shooting of Paul Fox. Maybe Kirkland kept a diary.”

  He eyed me carefully. “If there was a diary, the police would have taken it. Why do you think that Albert knew something about that shooting?”

  “He was killed for a reason,” I said. “He was seen in the parking lot behind the Fireside a couple of days before the shooting, talking with someone in one of those green Range Rovers you guys favor. The night after the shooting, he gets himself killed in the same parking lot. He never went inside the Fireside in all the time he was on the island, but twice he meets somebody in the parking lot, with Paul Fox getting himself shot in between meetings. That’s a lot of coincidence, don’t you think?”

  He shook his head. “Not enough to bring you here.”

  “There’s more. Kirkland was a pentathlon competitor back when you met him, according to Paul Fox and you.”

  “So?”

  “So he wasn’t good enough to make the Olympic team. He wasn’t much of a rider and only a so-so runner and swimmer. Is that how you remember him?”

  Hillborough turned the cane in his hands. “More or less.”

  “According to Paul Fox,” I went on, “Kirkland was all right as a fencer, but he had to be good at one of the five sports to think he had a chance. Paul didn’t mention Kirkland being bad at pistol shooting, so I’m guessing he was good at it. They shoot air pistols in Olympic competition, but a pistol is a pistol and, if I’m right about Kirkland being good with one, that makes him a real candidate as the shooter, because whoever plugged Paul Fox put two thirty-eight slugs into Paul’s chest right above his heart, and from a pretty good distance. It would take a good shot to do that.”

  Hillborough shook his head. “The shots were meant for Donald, not his brother. It was the opposite of good shooting—it was terrible shooting.”

  I put casual conviction into my voice. “No, the shots were for Paul. It wasn’t a mistake. Kirkland knew what he was doing, and if Paul hadn’t been wearing that vest that no one knew about, he’d be dead as you can get.”

  Hillborough’s eyes became oddly veiled. “That’s nonsense. Why would Al Kirkland try to kill Paul?”

  “People kill people for a lot of reasons.” I pretended to survey the room. “I came here to see if Kirkland left something behind that might tell us just what you want to know. An insurance policy of some kind.”

  “What do you mean by an insurance policy?”

  I moved away from him. “I mean something to protect himself in case he was threatened.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Of course you do. Kirkland was killed shortly after the attack on Paul Fox. He may have sensed that he was in danger and decided he needed a defense. As it turned out, his insurance policy, if he had one, did him no good. But if it exists and if we can find it, it might tell us who killed him.”

  Hillborough’s expression was wary, but he left the door and limped to the center of the next room, looking here and there as he moved. “Who did he fear? And why? Was it some angry property owner? There are such people, as I know all too well.” His voice had a bitter tone.

  “Yes,” I said, “you know about such people. But as far as I know, Dodie Donawa is the only islander who’s come after anybody working for Saberfox, and she was only after Paul for courting her daughter. No, I think somebody in the company got Kirkland to shoot Paul, then killed Kirkland to keep him from talking about it. I think Kirkland may have tried to protect himself by creating a document of some sort identifying the person who was behind the attack.” As I talked, I looked under pillows and pulled furniture from the walls and pretended to pay no attention to Hillborough.

  Hillborough began looking into cupboards. “You’re full of conjecture, aren’t you? If Kirkland had such a document, why didn’t it work? Why didn’t it keep Kirkla
nd alive? You’re guessing, and guessing badly.”

  But he kept on opening doors and peering inside them.

  I stood in the middle of the bedroom and scratched my head as I looked around. “I don’t know, but I can think of a couple of possibilities. Maybe the killer figured he could find the document before anybody else did, or maybe Kirkland got killed before he could say that he had one. A weapon is only a deterrent if the enemy knows you have it.”

  Hillborough’s lip curled. “Or, more probably, there was never such a document in the first place.”

  I nodded agreeably. “Well, so far that seems to be the case. But we’ve just gotten started.”

  For the next fifteen minutes I looked in wrong places, just to make my search seem legit. Then, when I finally peeked beneath the correct drawer and muttered, “Eureka,” I made sure that Hillborough was near enough to hear me.

  I pulled the folded paper off the drawer and put a smug smile on my face. “Well, well, what have we here?”

  Hillborough limped swiftly to me and reached out a hand. “Let me see that!”

  “Hold your horses!” I said, but he snatched the paper from me.

  “Get back!” he cried, shaking his cane in my face.

  “That’s addressed to your boss, not to you,” I protested, stepping back. “But the police should really have it.”

  He stared at the paper, then suddenly unfolded it. As he read, he paled. I took two side steps toward the door.

  “A forgery!” he cried. “Al Kirkland never wrote this! It’s a trick!”

  “What is it?” I asked, putting out a hand. “Let me see.”

  He hobbled backward, keeping between me and the door. “Get away! This is none of your business!” But then his eyes widened. “Wait! You wrote this, didn’t you? Of course you did! You want Donald to read it so he’ll turn on me. You slime! You’re worse than the others. Well, you won’t get away with it.” He thrust the note into a pocket. “Donald will never see this!”

  “Why? What does it say?”

  He stepped toward me. There was a cold madness in his voice. “You know! You know!” He gripped his cane with both hands.

  There was a light wooden chair about three feet behind me and to my left, and I thought I could get to it before he could reach me with the silver head of the cane.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “It says that you gave Kirkland the orders and the pistol to kill Paul. It says that you hate Paul the way you hate everyone else who comes between you and Donald. It says you don’t want Paul to take over the company and turn it into something different, something unlike what Donald has made it, and that you won’t let that happen because it’s not what Donald really wants, and that you’ve got some sort of sickness that makes Donald the center of your whole world. It says that Donald is the only person, the only thing, you love. It says that Kirkland is sorry about shooting Paul but is afraid of you, and that if anything fatal should happen to him, the police should arrest you for murder.

  “Or words to that effect. How am I doing?”

  “It’s a forgery! Kirkland never wrote it—you did!”

  “I don’t really need the note,” I said. “All I need is a quick talk with Donald and the police. I’ll tell them what’s written in that letter. They can take it from there. Donald will know that it’s true and he’ll never forgive you because he loves his brother even more than he loves Saberfox. You and he are through.”

  “You’re not going to tell anything to anyone,” he said, and he twisted the handle of his cane. Out of the cane came a glimmering steel blade, and as it leveled toward me, he lunged.

  26

  A straight lunge is the fastest way to get the point of a sword into its target, if the distance is right. I’d learned that much in my brief experience as a fencer wanna-be. And the distance was right for Hillborough. But if the target is moving backward fast enough as the lunge comes, the point will arrive in empty air, and even as Hillborough’s blade was hissing out of the cane, I was jumping away.

  I was shocked by the blade because I’d been expecting Hillborough to strike a blow with the silver ball on the cane’s handle, but my leap backward carried me to safety.

  Hillborough cursed and recovered forward, impeded by his damaged leg but moving swiftly. He came slashing after me, the action showing me that his sword had a cutting edge as well as a point. I snatched the wooden chair and swung it up in front of me as a shield. Paint and wood chips flew as his blade lashed the wood.

  The door to the living room was behind me and I backed through it. On my left was the door to the porch, but I didn’t know whether or not Hillborough had locked it behind him. If he hadn’t, I might make it outside. If he had, I’d have no time to open it before he was at me.

  Hillborough lurched into the living room and lunged low, beneath my shielding chair. I avoided the thrust only by jumping back and to my right, and Hillborough scurried between me and the porch door.

  But he couldn’t be everywhere. Behind me now was the kitchen so little used by Albert Kirkland. On its far wall was a back door. The door was also surely locked, but the kitchen had other attractions.

  For a moment both Hillborough and I paused and panted for oxygen that suddenly seemed scarce, then I retreated into the kitchen and finally had weapons of my own: knives both large and small. I plucked a large one from the magnetic holder on the wall as Hillborough came limping after me.

  “Be careful, Brad,” I said, holding the chair in my left hand and the knife in my right. “I may not know anything about swords, but I’m a fisherman, and fishermen know a lot about knives.”

  “Fuck you. A knife is just a short sword and I know more about swords than you do.”

  He lunged but I caught the point on the bottom of the chair. I swung the chair to one side in hopes of snapping the blade but his recovery was too fast. He shifted his feet and studied me with cold, diamond-hard eyes, the tip of his blade making tiny circles in the air.

  “You may have gotten Kirkland with that pig-sticker,” I said, “but I’m not Kirkland. I wasn’t taken by surprise.”

  “Albert was easy,” said Hillborough, taking breaths as deep as my own. “You’ll not be much harder.”

  I rued the locked rear door. It’s always more frustrating to be close to your heart’s desire than far from it.

  Hillborough thrust at my chest, but halfway through his lunge, as I swung the chair as a shield, he dropped his point to my knee. I jerked my leg back too late and felt the point strike my thigh. I swung the big knife at his arm but he was too fast with his recovery. I glanced down and saw blood on my pant leg just above my knee.

  “Touché!” said Hillborough mockingly. He extended his arm and pointed his sword at my eyes. Tiny lights seemed to dance from its needlelike tip.

  I threw the knife at him, but as I did he bent his arm, lifted his point, and easily parried it aside. I snatched another knife from the rack.

  “Was Kirkland threatening to name you as the mastermind of that botched try at Paul Fox?” I asked, panting. “Or did he just want more money to keep his mouth shut?”

  Hillborough made another feint and I moved my chair in front of his point. He nodded as if that was what he’d thought I might do. “Neither,” he said. “Albert was perfectly loyal and he wasn’t greedy. It’s just that when the plan went wrong, he became concerned about discovery. He wanted to talk with me, to be reassured. It made it very easy to kill him. One thrust at close range.”

  “You’re pretty cold,” I said. “He trusted you.”

  “Ah, but I didn’t trust him. He had to go, and now so do you. Donald must never know about any of this business.”

  He attacked ferociously, and amid flying chips of wood and paint, I was forced to leap back nearly to the door as I barely deflected the sword blows with the chair. It was getting heavier by the minute and I was getting slower swinging it. Hillborough stepped back and eyed me.

  His voice was almost theatrical. “You have run out of
retreating space and I am about to end the refrain and thrust home, as another swordsman once said. Good-bye, Mr. Jackson.”

  I threw the second knife but again he neatly parried it aside as I grabbed a third one. He smiled without warmth, extended his arm, and stepped forward. I threw the third knife, and once more, seemingly almost bored by my unimaginative attacks, he bent his sword arm, lifted his point, and made an easy parry.

  But this time as he parried I thrust at his sword with the chair and leaped toward him. The chair legs tangled with his blade, carrying it aside. He tried to jump back but his bad leg failed him, and in an instant I was inside the long reach of his sword. I dropped the chair and caught his sword wrist with both hands.

  We swayed and fought and he beat at me with his free hand, but I was the bigger man and at last I tore the sword from his grasp and threw it across the room.

  He caught up a heavy glass ashtray and crashed it against the side of my head. The world went gray and whirled around me. I hit him with a weak fist and he came back again with the ashtray. The gray turned black. I was in a room but I couldn’t see it. I got an arm up in time to catch the next blow from the ashtray. What a fate: to save myself from a sword, only to be killed with an ashtray.

  But he no longer had the ashtray. Somehow it had been separated from him. My vision came back enough for me to see him as he shoved me away and scrambled awkwardly after the sword cane.

  I threw the wooden chair at him and it knocked him down, but he was up again instantly and hobbling swiftly to the far corner of the room. I got my feet moving and managed to get to the front door. It wasn’t locked after all. I went out in a rush, slamming the door behind me. The cold air was a tonic. I made a shuffling run to the Land Cruiser, got in, and started the motor. Parked directly behind me was a green Range Rover.

  I looked back at the house. Hillborough was lurching rapidly along the walk in front of the house, coming toward me, sword in hand.

  I got the truck into gear, put the gas pedal to the floor, and left the smell of burning rubber behind me for Hillborough to inhale. In my rearview mirror I saw him heading for the Range Rover.