Murder at a Vineyard Mansion

by Philip R. Craig

  “Don’t her parents object to him coming around all the time and getting their daughter pregnant?”

  “The rape was only statutory. I guess they figure that if Mickey’s willing to break jail every week or so to see their little girl, his love is true and the child-to-be is the proof.”

  “It’s nice to know that romance is not dead, but I imagine the wedding will be delayed until Mickey serves the extra time he’ll get for busting out.”

  Kit nodded. “The child will no doubt emerge into the outer world before Mickey does.”

  “Tell me something. How come he never escaped until after supper and always came back before breakfast? Was that because he figured his keepers would be asleep between meals?”

  “Ah,” said Kit, “a sound but incorrect theory. The real reason is Duane Miller. You must have heard about him. There was a story about him in the Gazette a while back.”

  “But of course.”

  It all came back to me. Duane Miller was a gourmet chef who was serving a term in jail for selling dope to some friends. He’d made a deal with the jailers: if they’d use the jail’s food money to buy groceries he ordered, he’d cook for both the inmates and their keepers. The result of the agreement was that the best food on Martha’s Vineyard was served in the county jail. No wonder Mickey made sure that he never missed a meal inside.

  “You should write a book called Jail Tales,” I said. “It would be true, but everyone would believe it was fiction.”

  “When I write my book, I’m going to call it Policing Paradise,” said Kit. “No one who isn’t a cop will believe what I say either, but I won’t have to make anything up. I understand that one or two guys who used to work over at the jail have gotten through.”

  On the Vineyard, when you’re no longer working at a job, you’re said to have “gotten through.” The phrase includes no indication of causality. If Joe Blow got fired or quit, you’d know something about what happened, but if he got through, you wouldn’t. I liked that. In the case of the ex-jailers who had now gotten through, you might guess that they’d gotten fired because they’d allowed Mickey Gomes to escape over and over again, but you couldn’t be sure. Maybe they’d quit so they could go back to grad school to finish their doctoral studies.

  Behind me a loud mumble of voices indicated that the Chief’s office door had opened, and I turned to see Dom Agganis waving me inside as other officers moved out.

  I peeked at the kids as I went that way and saw that they were still being good enough to be rewarded with ice cream when I rejoined them. Inside the office I found myself with Dom, Olive, and the Chief.

  “Well?” The Chief was turning his unlit pipe in his hands. He was hoping, I thought, that my visit would be brief so he could duck outside and light up. I didn’t blame him. I hadn’t smoked in years but I still missed my bent corncob.

  “You’ve talked with Maud Mayhew, of course,” I said. “Did she mention paying me a visit yesterday?”

  The Chief and the state cops exchanged glances that didn’t reveal a thing. “Tell me about it,” he said.

  “She hired me to prove that Harold didn’t kill Ollie Mattes.”

  This time the Chief’s eyes narrowed slightly. He stuck the cold pipe in his mouth and chewed on the stem for a moment, then said, “Why did she think he needed somebody to do that?”

  “Because, according to Maud, Harold told her he’d smashed the windows in the Pierson house and he was afraid that if that got out he’d be suspected of going back there again and killing Ollie.”

  Silence prevailed. Finally Dom Agganis said, “Maud didn’t mention talking with you. Did you take the job?”

  “Yes. I suggested she get in touch with Thornberry Security, up in Boston, but she talked me into it.”

  “Are you sure you understood her right about Harold being the window breaker?”

  “There wasn’t much to misunderstand.”

  “It wouldn’t be hard for you,” said Olive. “You could misunderstand a soup spoon.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us what Maud said as soon as you heard it?” asked Dom.

  “I didn’t like Harold Hobbes but I couldn’t see him as a killer. I wasn’t going to drop a dime on him for breaking Pierson’s windows, especially when I was trying to keep him from being nailed as Ollie’s killer.”

  “If you’d spoken up, he might be alive today,” said Olive. “We might have been talking with him when he got his head bashed in. You’re a sad case, Jackson. I’ve got half a notion to collar you for withholding evidence of a crime.”

  “Try to control your attack puppy here, Dom,” I said. “She’s liable to get so excited she’ll bite herself to death.”

  “Both of you calm down,” said Dom, stepping between us. “I’m sick of this business between you two. You want to bad-mouth each other, you do it on your own time, not mine! You got that?”

  “I’m a civilian,” I said. “I’m civil by definition. I’m kind, loyal, and patriotic. My only flaw is that I don’t like small dogs.” I looked at Olive. “Including this one.”

  Olive clenched her teeth but said nothing.

  “Olive’s right, you know,” said the Chief. “If you’d told us what Maud told you, we might have had a talk with Hobbes and maybe he’d be alive instead of dead.”

  “That’s why I’m here now. I had that same idea stuck in my brain. I don’t believe it, but I had a hard time getting rid of it. Anyway, I thought it might interest you to know about Harold claiming to be the window breaker. It might save you some sleuthing.”

  The Chief nodded. “We’ll talk to Maud about it. You have any other tips you want to pass along?”

  “Only that Harold apparently had a life Maud didn’t know about. He wouldn’t tell her where he was when Ollie was killed. Or maybe he did tell her but she just didn’t want to tell me. Maybe she’ll tell you.”

  The Chief looked at me steadily. “You aren’t thinking of getting involved in this business, are you?”

  “Maud hired me to help Harold.”

  “You’re not answering my question.”

  “Harold’s dead, so you could argue that my job’s over.”

  “Stop dancing. Just answer the question.”

  “I go over to Chappy pretty often this time of year. I’ll probably keep it up.”

  “Don’t interfere with our work.”

  “I gave up being a cop years ago. I don’t want your job.”

  “Do you think Maud knows more than she told you about Harold?”

  “I believe people will hold back information and lie to defend themselves and the ones they love. I accused Maud of doing that, hoping that it might shock her into telling me more than she did. But she didn’t shock and I can’t think of any reason why she would have lied to me, although maybe she did. Do you have any theories about who coshed Harold?”

  “None of your business,” said Olive.

  “We’re working on it,” said the Chief. “You think you owe something to Maud, do you? Your long nose is itchy, isn’t it?”

  “My nose isn’t itchy,” I said, “but I owe Maud. Or maybe it’s Harold I owe. Or maybe Olive is right for once: maybe none of this is my business. I’ve told you everything I know, and now I’m going to take my kids down for ice cream. You minions of the law can take it from here.”

  I turned and went out the door. As I did, I heard the Chief’s ironic voice say, “And why so great a no?”

  He’d been reading Cyrano again, apparently. That also explained the itchy nose metaphor.

  I got into the Land Cruiser and said, “Who won the game?”

  “We’re not through yet, Pa.” One of the nice things about crazy eights is that it can go on a long, long time; maybe forever.

  “What do you guys say to us getting some ice cream first and then taking a ride over to Chappaquiddick?”

  Diana the huntress folded her cards immediately. I wasn’t surprised. “That sounds good, Pa! Let’s do it.”

  And we did. We
went to Mad Martha’s and got cones, then, eating till the cones were gone, took the On Time ferry across to Chappy and drove to the fishermen’s parking lot above Cape Pogue Gut on North Neck, where we parked beside a couple of other cars decorated with rod racks.

  “Are we going fishing, Pa?” asked Joshua as we got out of the truck.

  “No. We’re going to take a walk along the beach and look at a new house that’s being built on top of the bluffs.”

  4

  On North Neck there’s a path leading from the small fishermen’s parking lot to the top of the bluffs overlooking Cape Pogue Gut, and a stairway leading down to the beach. Fishermen who don’t have four-wheel-drive vehicles or lack the time to drive all the way out to the far beaches of Chappaquiddick can park in the lot and walk to the gut to do their fishing. A lot of fish have been caught in the gut, some of them by me.

  When the idea of the lot was first proposed to the town selectmen, a number of North Neck homeowners howled to the moon. The neighborhood’s ambience was going to be ruined by hordes of fishermen; ecological disaster would occur; the end of the world was at hand. Lawsuits were threatened; pious arguments were printed in the local papers; people who had their own stairways down the bluffs condemned the proposed stairway as a threat to the environment; searches for endangered plants and insects were demanded. Great was the hue and cry of CHOA people and others.

  But all in vain. The town held firm and built the lot, path, and stairway, and, lo, the sun continued to rise in the east, North Neck land prices did not plummet, and the cry of the turtle was still heard throughout the land.

  From the top of the bluffs, Joshua and Diana and I had a good view of the gut. There were a couple of fly casters working the water on our side, and on the other side three SUVs were parked. Their drivers and passengers were also casting into the fast-moving stream that was flowing into Cape Pogue Pond as the tide rose. I’d sailed in and out of the pond many times, and it could be very tough going if you were tacking against a strong tide and a weak wind.

  To the north, beyond the Cape Pogue elbow and across the edge of Nantucket Sound, we could see the Oak Bluffs bluffs and beyond them, running to the east, the dim line of land that was Cape Cod. To the west was Edgartown, with its white lighthouse looking small against the higher background of houses on Starbuck Neck. There were sailboats on the blue sound and as always I wondered whither they were bound.

  Immediately to our left the bluff was topped by houses, all of them modest when compared with the rising skeleton of Ron Pierson’s mansion-in-progress. I was of two minds about the building of palaces on the Vineyard. On the one hand I wished their owners would settle for something simpler, but on the other I thought they had the right to build any size house they wanted to build.

  My disapproval of some people telling other people what size houses they should live in was no doubt a by-product of my general dislike of people in positions of authority ever trying to tell me what to do and how to do it. The more commandingly they behaved, the less kindly I took to such folk and the more sympathetic I was to those half-mad hermits who go off and live in caves.

  We went down the stairs and walked west, with the bluffs rising on our left and the waves slapping the shore on our right. It didn’t take long to fetch the rocky stretch of beach below Pierson’s Palace, where Ollie Mattes’s body had been found three days ago lying among the stones.

  I looked up at the steep bluff down which Diana had seen something falling as we’d come home from our evening sail. It was easy to imagine how the person who had caved in Ollie’s head and tossed his body off the cliff might have hoped, even expected, that the death would have been ruled an accident. But as has happened with better plans than that one, the medical examiner had seen through it and now Ollie’s murderer was being sought by the local law.

  “You two stay down here,” I said to my offspring. “I’m going up to the top.”

  “Oh, good! We’ll come too!”

  “No, you won’t. I don’t want to worry about you falling down and breaking your necks. You wait here.”

  “We won’t break our necks, Pa. We’re good climbers.”

  Better than I was, probably, but I was firm.

  “Stay here until I get back.”

  “What if you fall down and break your neck?”

  It was not an entirely unlikely possibility. “Then you go back to the gut and get some help from those fishermen. But don’t worry. I’m not going to fall, and I won’t be long.”

  “Whatcha gonna do up there, Pa?”

  “Just look around.”

  The slope was made of dirt and stone brought down from New Hampshire and points north by the last ice age glacier. The islands of Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Block Island, and Long Island marked the southern end of its progress. All had once been only hills of earth piled up by the ice, but as the glaciers melted and the sea rose they had become islands.

  The bluff was very hard going, and I had to climb carefully because of the treacherous footing. More than once I came close to sliding back down to the beach, and I wished for one of those staircases that led down the bluff from some of the older North Neck homes. Ron Pierson would no doubt have such a stairway of his own someday, but he didn’t have one today. Where are you when I need you, Ron? As I climbed I was glad that I didn’t have to do it during the rain or during the night, and I wondered just what it was I thought I might find at the top of the bluff.

  When I reached it, I glanced down and saw that Joshua was showing Diana how to skip flat rocks across the water. It was a good thing to know, and I was pleased that my son was teaching his sister how it was done. Then I peeked over the lip of the cliff to see if anyone—workman, watchman, policeman, or other person—was there. No one was, but yellow police tape surrounded the partially built house and part of the grounds. I scrambled to my feet and studied the place.

  A new driveway had been bulldozed through the trees, and trees and oak brush had been cut down to create a broad open space for the house and future lawns and outbuildings. Construction materials, both of stone and wood, were stacked everywhere, and a trailer for tools and other equipment was parked beside a large generator. I was alone on the grounds and aware of that odd silence you sometimes hear around an empty or unfinished structure. I guessed that the yellow tape was keeping workers away and that Pierson hadn’t yet had time to find himself another watchman to keep an eye on things.

  The first story of the house and part of the second were already closed in, and a third story had been framed. A wide porch surrounded the house and a large second-story balcony faced the sea. The house was being built in a Victorian style more typical of Oak Bluffs than of Edgartown, and it was going to be huge.

  Every window in the house seemed to have been broken, including the leaded, stained-glass panes of a miniature version of the Chartres rose window over the front door. It had taken a good deal of time to do all that damage and must have made a certain amount of noise. I wondered if any of the neighbors had heard anything.

  I ducked under the police tape and went into the house. Even though it was in the early stages of construction, I could see that it was going to be a first-class structure, with no money being spared by its owner. There was a massive cellar space, and a carved and curved staircase led to the second floor. The kitchen was big enough for a half dozen cooks, and its stove, refrigerator, freezer, sinks, and cabinets, all still in their boxes, were the finest made. There were two boxed dishwashers and the counters were topped with stone.

  I went through the place from top to bottom, touching nothing but the occasional doorknob. I couldn’t be sure, but the faucets in the bathrooms seemed to be made of gold.

  I walked around the porch and looked at the grounds, wondering where watchman Ollie Mattes had encountered his nemesis. There was no way for me to tell. One thing was certain, though: there were blunt instruments aplenty near at hand, in the form of tools and lengths of wood and pipe.

  I th
ought about Ollie Mattes, and about the gold faucets, and about Harold Hobbes.

  Then I heard the sound of a vehicle coming up the driveway, and trotted back to the lip of the bluff, where I slid down out of sight then peeked back over. J. W. Jackson, master spy. The vehicle was a middle-aged station wagon driven by a woman. She parked and got out and looked at the house. I guessed she was about forty, but I can never really tell how old people are these days. Thanks to clothing styles, hair dye and makeup, diet, exercise, and plastic surgery, some daughters look older than their mothers, and some fathers look younger than their sons.

  This woman’s blonde hair was shoulder length and she was wearing casual clothes that were not new but that had been expensive when purchased. Two of the ways you can tell the difference between rich girls and poor girls is that poor girls have long hair and rich girls don’t, and that poor girls like to wear the newest clothes they can afford and rich girls don’t. Another difference is that rich girls walk like they’re carrying field-hockey sticks and poor girls don’t. Rich girls also have bigger chins a lot of the time but that didn’t apply in this case. This woman’s chin was normal, but there was no doubt that she was a rich girl.

  I didn’t know who she was, but then I don’t know most of the people on Martha’s Vineyard, especially the rich girls. I memorized the license plate on the station wagon then ducked down as the woman took her eyes off the house and swung them in my direction. It seemed a good time to retreat, so I did that, stepping carefully and doing some sliding down the slope, preceded by bouncing stones and small avalanches of dirt and sand. On the beach I dusted myself off and joined my children at the water’s edge.

  Diana had not mastered the art of skipping stones and was getting tired of trying.

  Part of her problem was that her stones weren’t flat enough. Nobody can skim a round rock. I found some flat ones.

  “Here,” I said, giving her one that was the right size for her little hand. “My father called these ‘donies’ when I was a kid. When we threw rocks he called it flinging donies. We called slingshots donie flingers. This game was called skipping donies. Watch the way Joshua is doing it. See? He throws sidearm and he rolls the donie off his trigger finger. Like this.” I showed her how to hold the donie, then flung it and watched it skip four times. “Now you try it.”