by Leslie Glass
Let's go. Let's go.
The nineteen seats filled up. Affluent people with a certain look. Expensive khaki clothes, expensive casual carry-on bags. Buff people, Wendy's kind of people, fit and secure. And used to the drill. Only April and Mike were tapping their watches.
"Jesus, look at that. We're never getting out of here." April pointed out the planes lining up on the runway.
"We'll be fine." Mike squeezed her hand, always the optimist.
Finally, the door was closed. The two propeller engines sputtered to life, and the Tinkertoy plane taxied out sounding like something from World War II. Not too many minutes later, the copilot rattled off safety instructions and the little commuter took its place on the runway between jumbo giants off to faraway places.
Taking off, the plane teetered from side to side, fighting rising winds. At a hundred feet it hung there, engines throbbing. April watched the jets ahead of them soar up and away. Then the plane bounced a few times like a jeep off-road, losing altitude before it began to fight its way higher. Her empty stomach lurched. She clutched the arm of her seat and concentrated on the changing views: Rikers Island, the new Manhattan skyline, the George Washington Bridge receding behind them. Long Island and the coast opening out ahead.
Forty-seven
F
or forty-five minutes the little commuter bounced around in bumpy air. Then a patch of green appeared ahead in choppy, whitecapped water and grew larger undl it reached the size of Manhattan. The turbulence increased as they went inland and down. The plane seesawed as it came down and connected hard with the ground twice before finally settling into a jerky taxi toward a toy-sized airport.
"Welcome to Martha's Vineyard, and thanks for flying American Eagle," the pilot announced.
April saw the police cruiser parked on the runway and unhooked her seat belt with a little sigh of relief. The local sheriff was waiting for them as he had promised. As soon as she and Mike broke away from the other disembarking passengers and headed his way, he stuck out a paw. If he felt any surprise by the New York team, he didn't show it.
"You got here right on schedule. Bert Whitmore, at your service." The sheriff was five-ten, heavy build, wearing a khaki uniform with a considerable belly protruding over his belt, bristly gray hair growing out well past the crew-cut stage, sharp blue eyes.
"Lieutenant Sanchez and Sergeant Woo. Thanks for coming out for us," Mike said.
"No trouble at all. We don't get too many requests from Nu Yawk. We have a lot of respect for you folks, what you did last fall. Anything to help." Whitmore smiled at April. "You the one who called me last night?"
"Yes, sir."
"You didn't tell me much." He waved his hand at the new-looking cruiser with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts seal on the front doors. It was real clean and neat, had a cage separating the front and back seats, and all the modern technology. "What's your time line?" he asked.
"We're going back out at fifteen hundred. You okay with that?" Mike asked.
"Anything you want is okay with me. I'm here to help." Whitmore glanced back at the wind socks on the runway, snapping hard in a rising wind and deepening haze. He shrugged big shoulders, then climbed stiffly into the car. "You'll be fine getting out if the weather holds."
"What if the weather doesn't hold?" Mike asked, checking his watch, then opening the front passenger door for April.
"Ferry to Woods Hole. Bus to Baaston or Hyannis. Or you can wait it out."
Cold, wet air gusted at them. April shivered and shook her head. Spring was several weeks behind here; maybe they wouldn't get home as easily as they got here. She chose the backseat, happy to let Mike do the talking for the moment. His hand grazed hers as she climbed into the back.
"You're here about those wedding shootings down there, huh? Terrible thing. One of you want to fill me in?" The sheriff started the engine and drove around a fortune in private planes parked in a grid next to the runway like cars in a big lot.
"How long have you been on the job, Sheriff?" Mike asked.
"Call me Bert. Going on nineteen years now," he said.
"You know a family up here called Lotte?"
"Oh, sure. Over on Lake Tashmoo. The little lady told me you wanted to go out there and take a look."
"You had a shooting incident there back about seventeen years. Do you remember anything about that?"
"Sure, I do. I went to grammar school with Barry Wood. We looked into it pretty carefully because of the sticky situation." The cruiser bumped off the field onto the service road and threaded through a bunch of buildings that looked like army barracks. At the entrance to the airport, he turned left onto a road that was empty but for cars leaving the airport.
"What kind of situation?"
"Missus Lotte took up with Barry's father, and there was a lot of bad feeling between the families over the divorce. Barry and Wendy went away to school. Then in college during the summers the two were running around the island together, getting into trouble."
"Oh, what kind of trouble?"
"Oh, you know, the usual kind of thing for here. Vineyard Haven is a dry town. They'd run into Oak Bluffs and get beer, drink out on the beach, light firecrackers. Once they set off a rocket across the cut. It set the beach grass on fire and burned out a couple acres." He thought about it for a few moments.
"They weren't malicious, though. They alerted the fire department right away. Otherwise we could have lost a couple of houses out there. Everything's shingle on the beach, and pretty much everywhere else, too." He let out a chortle. "And they grew Mary Jane out in the vegetable garden. Those two were pretty wild for here, and their families, too."
He turned left again at a four-way intersection with a blinking yellow light. The weather was deteriorating fast. Fog rolled in at around a hundred feet April could see it move forward like a wall. Unlike New York, where it just thickened the air until you couldn't see the tops of the buildings.
"What about the shooting?" Mike asked.
They passed a farm with fields just planted, houses, all gray shingle with shutters. Now they were on a main road with fancy SUVs and only white people driving them. April tried to imagine Wendy's life here as a kid growing up. A few miles on they turned left again, passed a cemetery, a grocery store, a couple of small strip malls. Then a sudden deep curve in the road brought them to a grassy hill overlooking a cove with bobbing sailboats below and they were in picture-postcard land.
"This here is the inland side of the lake."
They passed a horse farm with barns and an elegant white clapboard house, and soon turned onto a dirt road. Bert resumed his story.
"Wendy cleaned up pretty good after she went to college. No more trouble before the shooting. They had a twenty-eight-acre place and did trapshooting out there, target shooting. Harry Lotte had always been an enthusiastic sport shooter, and somebody was always complaining about him and the kids shooting out there in the dunes. Wendy was into it pretty big. Did you know she almost went to the Olympics her senior year of college?"
"Yeah, we heard something about it."
"Why did she shoot Barry?" April asked.
"The way they told it, Wendy was target shooting, didn't see Barry behind it. Bullet went through the target and hit him in the shoulder."
"What kind of target?" April asked.
"Old fashioned bull's-eye target," he replied. "Like for archery. Not much to it. It could have happened that way." He shrugged.
But that wasn't the way Wendy told it.
"Humph. Is shooting like that legal out here?" April asked.
"Nope, but as I told you, they did it."
"Did you compare the heights of the target and the victim to see if it could have been an accident?" April asked.
"I was pretty new on the job. I wasn't an investigator back then. That's what they said, and that's what they stuck to. It got in the paper, but it wasn't a real big deal, except those two broke up afterward, and the families moved away."
"Wh
at about the gun?" April, still asking from the backseat.
"AR-7."
"Takedown," Mike finished.
"Yep."
The classic survival rifle used first by the military and then on countless RVs, boats, and planes for the last forty years. Not much in favor on the market anymore, but hundreds of thousands of them were out there. It was a good gun for the wilderness, for shooting small game, and for plinking tin cans.
"Pretty neat little thing. The barrel, action, and eight-round magazine each have a compartment in the stock."
"Caliber .22," April said from the back.
"Yes, ma'am."
That's what they were looking for.
"Was the gun confiscated?" Mike asked.
"It was registered." Bert turned to Mike briefly. Up went his shoulder.
"Any complaints about shooting out there this season?" April asked.
"We have strict gun laws here in Massachusetts. We don't let anybody get away with any reckless shooting now." Tins he was sure about. "They can own, of course, but they can't just shoot anywhere."
The cruiser traveled down a deeply rutted, bone-jarring dirt road that wound through a dense scrub-oak forest, posted with NO HUNTING signs. Other signs pointed down branching roads to houses named Chateau, Swindle, Osprey Nest. Suddenly a deer with two tiny fawns crashed through the brush and crossed the road ahead of them. April caught her breath at the dazzling sight.
"Troublesome creatures." Bert didn't even slow down.
Mike turned around to smile at April. Nature. Unexpectedly lovely. Then he asked a question April didn't hear. Bert answered with a laugh. He was acting like a tourist guide, still hadn't asked how the old case pertained to the homicides in the big city. At twenty yards a .22 bullet might well travel through a soft target at close range, but it didn't play well to April, and it wasn't the story Wendy had told her. Why tell a different story now? She thought about it as the trees thinned and sand and sea grass filled the ruts that pretended to be road. Maybe Wendy's story changed in her mind over the years. Maybe she just lied all the time. They were almost there.
A tight turnaround with a scrub oak in the center formed a wheel off of which one road led out to beach and open water and two doubled back inland. The cruiser dipped into a pothole a foot deep and followed a crude hand-painted sign for Blueberry Farm, then turned again onto another bumpy road. He stopped in a clearing where the pine forest edged the lake.
"This is it?" April was surprised. The house was hardly more than a cottage.
"The main house is down the road. It was sold off years ago. The barn here, along with a few acres and about a hundred feet of waterfront, was kept, built at the same time. I think Wendy owns it. The water's brackish, so she can't rent."
So what Wendy had told her in the interview room was half truth. Sea grass was high in front of the house. A badly rusting van and a moped were parked there. April's heart spiked as they got out of the cruiser and hiked along a narrow path through the wet grass.
Bert went first and knocked on the door. Wet wind slapped at their clothes and faces as they waited. April shivered in her cotton jacket. It was downright cold up here.
"Open up, police," Bert said.
They waited some more. Bert turned the handle and the door opened. "Anybody home?"
A girl wearing a long flowered skirt and a sweatshirt opened the door. Her hair was messy and her face didn't know it was morning.
"Who is it?" A male voice called from the other room.
"Lori Wilson?" April asked.
"Yes." Lori squinted out at them in sleepy surprise. "Hello. It's the police," over her shoulder. A warning.
"Sheriff Whitmore," Bert said.
April went next. "Sergeant Woo, Lieutenant Sanchez, NYPD."
"Jesus. What's going on?" Lori glanced around the small living room that was as folksy and American-country as Wendy's city apartment was urban-spare. At the moment it was in murky light and a mess. The faded, flowered sofas were littered with take-out food bags, empty beer bottles, and large soda cups. On the wood floor, the multicolored braided rugs were covered with sand. The fireplace was full of charred wood from many fires, and the room had a stale, smoky smell.
"You haven't heard?" Whitmore said, looking around.
"Heard what? We don't have a TV. She hasn't turned the phone on yet." She looked embarrassed when a young man in army fatigues emerged from one of two doors. One side of his face had a row of piercing on the eyebrow and another ringing the ear. Symmetry. A stud in his nose. The other side of his face was randomly pierced. His light hair was a huge nest of dreds. He appeared to be a young person trying to look as messed up as possible and succeeding very well. April guessed he had not reached legal drinking age, and Lori was a few years older.
"Hey, what's going on?" The kid raised his fingers in a peace sign at the sheriff.
"What are you doing here, Rod?"
"Just hanging with, uh, Lori." The kid shook spider webs out of a brain he didn't know how to use. "I was just on my way to work," he added, edging toward the door.
"I don't think so, Rod. It's Sunday."
"Already?" Rod seemed surprised by that and got defensive right away. "Whatever your problem is, I didn't do anything. We just hung out for a couple of days, okay? That's it." He gave the wash sign with his hands. Done. Could he go now?
"I'd like to talk to Lori," April said.
"Okay. You can tell me your life history, Rod." The sheriff moved him out the front door.
Mike moved inside. "Anyone else here?" he asked Lori.
"Uh-uh." She stuck a finger in her mouth.
Mike snorted and moved through the house, checking it for himself. April took out her notebook.
"Is Wendy all right?" Lori brushed the hair from her face and sank down on a sofa.
"How long have you been here, Lori?" April asked.
"About a week, I guess. Can't you tell me what's going on?"
April ignored the question. "Don't guess. Tell me exactly"
"I guess I came last Sunday."
"You guess? How did you get here?" April picked up a greasy Subway sack, then put it down.
"I took the bus to Woods Hole and then the ferry."
"Before or after the Schoenfeld wedding?" April turned on a light.
Lori squinted. "I didn't have to go. Wendy was doing it herself."
"I thought it takes a lot of people to pull off a wedding like that." April turned on some more lights.
"Not when it's only one site. That always keeps the glitches down, and sometimes Wendy likes to do them herself. She's very efficient. Why are you asking?" Lori twisted around to look at her.
April spun around, startling her. "She gave you these two weekends off, why?"
Lori recoiled. April noticed the hickey on her neck. A big one. She saw April looking at her and shifted uneasily; clearly she hadn't seen herself in the mirror.
"Why the two weekends off? Did you have another job Wendy wanted you to do?"
"Like what?" Lori was surprised by the question.
"Did you know Tovah Schoenfeld was murdered at her wedding last Sunday?"
Lori looked down at her hands. "Yes."
"How do you know if you don't have a phone?"
Her voice got very low. "I have a cell phone."
"And what else made you know?"
"She came up on Tuesday night."
Good. That was true. "Did she tell you she was coming?"
"Yes. I had to clean up for her. She would have killed me."
"Wendy's very particular, isn't she?"
Lori put her lips together and nodded.
"She wouldn't like to see her house like this. Why did she come, Lori?"
"She brought some things for the summer."
"In the middle of a busy week? What things?"
"I don't know." "Where did she put them?"
"I don't know. I was asleep when she got here." Lori's eyes traveled up the wall to the ceiling.
> "In the attic?" April said.
Silence. The thin girl got smaller, younger-looking. "I said I don't know."
"How old are you, Lori?"
"Twenty-four," she said softly.
'Twenty-four. Where were you yesterday?"
"Here." She frowned. "Why?"
"Lori, have you ever been in any kind of trouble before? Tell me the truth, because I can check it out."
"No," she said in a faint voice.
"You're in a lot of trouble now."
"I didn't know about Tovah until Wendy told me," she said, a plea in her voice.
"What about Prudence, did you know Prudence?"
"Prudence?"
"Prudence Hay. Another one of the weddings you didn't work. Prudence is dead, too."
"What?" Lori looked confused. "I didn't know about that. What happened?"
"Someone shot her on the way into St. Patrick's."
"God, I didn't know that." Her mouth fell open in amazement. "Is Wendy all right?"
"She's fine."
Mike came back into the hving room. "Nothing in the bedrooms or the closets," he said. "There's a deck out back and an outbuilding of some kind, like a tool-shed. What about the kitchen cupboards? Let's do inside first."
"They're in the attic," April told him quietly. "Lori, get your things together. You're going back to New York."
Forty-eight
"Hey, Mike, take some gloves' April said. "Just in case."
She pulled some thin rubber gloves out of the bottom of her purse and handed them over. Mike stuffed them in his jacket pocket. This wasn't a crime scene. He cocked his head at the ceiling panel in the hall over his head. It had a handle at one end just out of his reach. A pole with a hook on the end rested in the corner, and Mike used that to lower the panel. Attached to the panel on the inside was a crude ladder on springs. He turned to the girl in the living room, twisting a handful of skirt in her hands.
"Anybody up there?" he asked.
She shook her tangled hair. "No, of course not."
"You sure?"
"Who'd be hiding? No one expected you. Can I pee?"
"Yeah, you can pee. I'll come with you," April said.
"Jesus," she muttered. "What do you think I'm going to do?"
