Murder at a Vineyard Mansion

by Philip R. Craig

  Big sighs. “Yes, Pa.”

  “Good.”

  “Pa?”

  “What?”

  “Can we go next time?”

  “Probably not. You can go to all the funerals you like when you grow up.”

  “Pa?”

  “What?”

  “When are we going to get our computer?”

  It was a lovely day for a funeral. The summer sun was warm and the blue arch of the sky curled high above human heads. I sat in the back row of the church’s pews and looked at the people who attended Ollie’s last rites. There weren’t many of them, but Father Joe treated them to a more dignified service than Ollie probably deserved. Afterward I stayed where I was and watched until the last person went out onto Main Street. I was pretty sure who Ollie’s wife and kids were, since they had been down in front, nearest the casket. They looked solemn but not heartbroken. I was more interested in some other mourners.

  I followed the hearse to the graveyard, then stood by my truck, well back from the grave, while Father Joe said last words over the late lamented Ollie. There was something primeval about the ceremony and I had little doubt that this rite of passage, in one form or another, had been of unparalleled importance since the dawn of civilization. And why not, for what greater mysteries are there than life and death? Whence came we? Whither do we go?

  My take on it didn’t involve souls or heaven and hell. Rather, my theory was that there is a constant amount of energy in the universe and that one of its forms is life. When that life ends, the energy takes a new form. The body’s movement and heat cease. The corpse rots. A flower grows. A bee sucks its nectar. A bear eats the bee’s honey and perhaps the bee itself. The bear dies and is eaten by worms. A tree grows in worm-rich soil; it’s struck by lightning. Its energy takes the form of fire. Nothing is lost.

  Today the energy that had been Ollie was being transformed. What shape would it take? Perhaps there was a God who knew. I doubted it.

  When the graveside service ended I watched people walk back to their cars. Two of them, a man and a woman, spoke briefly to the widow and her children, then walked to a Volvo station wagon. The woman was Cheryl Bradford, and the man, who was about her age, had similar posture and facial bone structure. Brother Ethan, I guessed.

  I got into my truck, and when the station wagon pulled out of the graveyard, I followed it. Cheryl Bradford drove up-island and took South Road to Chilmark, where she entered one of those narrow, sandy driveways that lead from the Vineyard’s paved roads. The mailbox beside the driveway had no name on it, only a number. The Bradfords, like many of the Vineyard’s moneyed families, preferred their privacy. Theirs was not the only large island house at the end of an inconspicuous driveway.

  The more newly rich and sometimes the younger members of old families preferred to advertise their presence and display their success by erecting more observable castles. One such was the successful car dealer who had offended local sensibilities by building a hotel-sized house on Edgartown Harbor; another was Ron Pierson, who was in the process of doing the same thing on Chappaquiddick. Once, when the automobile dealer was asked what he’d do differently in light of the criticism he’d received for building such a giant structure, he replied with a wide smile that he’d build it bigger. So much for community sensitivities.

  Bucolic Chilmark scorns wide roads and ignores the dangers their narrow, winding ones impose upon bicyclists, walkers, and moped riders, but I found a place to turn around without getting killed by traffic rounding blind corners and then found another place to park where I could see the Bradford driveway. I didn’t have long to wait before a battered Jeep lurched out onto the road and turned toward West Tisbury. I had a good look at the driver’s face as he checked oncoming traffic before pulling onto the highway. Ethan Bradford was at the wheel. I followed him.

  He took a right toward Edgartown then a left on Old County Road until he came to another of those sandy lanes that are found all over the island. He turned into the narrow lane and I pulled over beside the road and waited a minute before following. The lane was winding and the Jeep wasn’t in sight. Listing poles carried sagging wires parallel to the road. From time to time other narrow roads and wires split off the main one, causing me to slow and check tire tracks before going on. Fortunately for me the lane was little used, so the Jeep’s track was not hard to follow.

  There is a lot more undeveloped land on Martha’s Vineyard than you might guess. You can see it from the air, but not from most roads. Much of it was open grazing land a hundred years ago, but in the century since tourism seriously began to replace agriculture as the island’s chief economic base, the fields have become new forests crisscrossed with fallen stone walls. Back in the trees are the foundations of long-gone farm buildings and houses, holes that were once cellars, old wells, and other hints at past sites of human occupation.

  Around a sharp turn, the road I was following ended in a small meadow holding a badly maintained house. Its roofline was irregular and shingles were missing from its walls. A rotting wooden fence surrounded a vegetable garden between the house and a weather-beaten barn. The Jeep was parked in front of the house and beside it, facing me, a double-barreled shotgun cradled in his arms, stood Ethan Bradford. He still wore his proper funeral clothes but he reminded me of a young William Devil Anse Hatfield eyeing a McCoy.

  I pulled alongside his Jeep and got out. I heard Baroque violin music drifting out of the house behind him, but it didn’t impress me as much as the shotgun.

  He stared at me with narrow eyes. “Who the hell are you?”

  “J. W. Jackson. Are you Ethan Bradford?”

  “You been following me since the graveyard. What the hell you want?”

  “You know how to use a rearview mirror.”

  “I know how to use a shotgun, too.”

  I felt a little tingle of fear. “I didn’t come here for trouble,” I said. “I came to talk.”

  He cocked the weapon. “I’m not in a talking mood. Get your ass off of my property.”

  “You don’t need a gun to get rid of me,” I said.

  “I may not need it, but I’ve got it. Now git!”

  I was angry as well as frightened. “If you point that thing at me, I can charge you with assault with a deadly weapon.”

  “Not if you’re dead.” He sneered but he didn’t point the shotgun.

  “What do you know about Ollie Mattes’s death?”

  His eyes widened then narrowed again. “Nothing. Ollie fell off a cliff.”

  “The police say he was murdered.”

  “The police don’t know shit.”

  “They know murder when they see it. He didn’t have many friends, but you and your sister were at his funeral. You—”

  I stopped speaking as he lifted the shotgun. It still wasn’t pointed at me, but his finger was on the trigger. His voice was thin and cold like a winter wind.

  “He wasn’t my friend. You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your relatives. Now get the hell off of my land before I have an accident cleaning this gun!”

  I didn’t want to turn my back on him, but I did. I got into the Land Cruiser and turned it around and left. As I did I heard him shout, “And don’t come back!”

  8

  I’d willed my hands to stop shaking by the time I got back out to the paved road. There, still feeling ice along my spine and thinking about Ethan Bradford’s words, I turned and drove back to Cheryl Bradford’s driveway in Chilmark. I turned in past the PRIVATE PROPERTY sign that adorned the entrance and followed the lane to the house and outbuildings.

  The site was another old farmstead, but this one, unlike the one I’d just left, was well maintained. The buildings and fences were painted and the house was well roofed and shingled. Beyond the house, to the south, an open field fell away to marsh-land that bordered a pond separated from the sea by a barrier beach. On the far side of the beach the waves of the blue Altantic broke upon the sand. If you sailed straight south
you’d see no other land until you fetched the Bahamas.

  Once that field had probably grazed sheep or cattle, but now it held three horses. I remembered that Annie Pease had once taken a fall from a horse and that Uncle Ethan had been with her at the time. There are a lot of horse people on the Vineyard, but I am not one of them. Horses and I do not have a symbiotic relationship. When I ride one it’s an uncomfortable experience for both of us, and we are mutually glad to bid each other good-bye as soon as possible. I wondered if my children, having failed to persuade me to get a dog, would ever make a plea for a horse. If so, they were doomed to further disappointment.

  A horse trailer hooked to a sturdy SUV stood beside a large barn and corral. A tall red stallion was tied to a fence beside the trailer, saddled and ready to go. Cheryl Bradford’s station wagon was parked in front of the house. I parked beside it and got out. I glanced at the horse and saw its head come up and its ears lie back as it stared back at me. It stomped a hoof and shook its beautiful satanic head.

  “Don’t worry,” I said to it. “I’m not coming any closer.”

  I went to the front door. Cheryl Bradford herself answered my knock almost immediately and arched a quizzical brow over a polite smile when she saw me. She was still wearing her funeral clothes. Her sad eyes flicked over me from toe to crown. They were eyes you could fall into. Her smile was purely formal.

  “Hello,” she said, “may I help you?”

  “My name’s Jackson,” I said. “I was at Ollie Mattes’s funeral earlier, and I just came from your brother’s place. He didn’t seem to be in a mood to talk, so I came here. I hope I’m not intruding.”

  From inside the house a woman’s voice asked, “Who is it, Cheryl? One of your men?”

  Cheryl turned her head and said, “No, Mother. It’s a Mr. Jackson.”

  “What does he want?”

  “I’m about to find out, Mother.” Cheryl turned back to me. “My mother still thinks I’m sweet sixteen and need watching. Now, what were you saying?”

  I wondered if her mother might be half right. I said, “I was saying your brother didn’t want to talk to me so I came here.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Jackson.”

  I pulled up one corner of my mouth and tried to look a bit perplexed myself. “I’m sure you don’t, Mrs. Bradford. It’s just that I have an interest in Ollie’s death. My young daughter saw him fall down that bluff under Ron Pierson’s house, you know.”

  Her maternal instinct kicked in as I’d hoped. “I didn’t know. Dear me, I hope she wasn’t traumatized. How old is she?”

  “She’s four, and she’s fine. I don’t think she even knows what she saw, in fact. We were sailing past the bluffs when it happened and the visibility wasn’t too good. She didn’t know it was a body. It wasn’t until the next day, when I heard about Ollie, that I realized what she’d seen.”

  “I’m glad she’s all right. But I’m afraid I still don’t know why you’re here.”

  I rubbed a hand through my hair. “I’ll try to explain. It’s like this. Ollie and I weren’t best buddies or anything like that, but we used to talk. You know, about one thing or another. And we got along. Anyway, I feel bad about what happened, so I thought I’d tell somebody in the family about what my little girl saw and how Ollie had one friend, at least.”

  The reference to family evoked no response. “Why don’t you talk with Helga?” she asked. “She was his wife.”

  I gave her what I hoped was an apologetic look. “She and the kids are grieving right now, and I didn’t feel right about interrupting. You know what I mean? But Ollie always spoke well of you and your brother, so I figured I would talk with one of you and you could tell them what I just told you. I hope I’m not putting you out by asking this. Maybe later, when Helga and the kids are more on an even keel, I can talk to her myself.”

  Her face maintained its small, polite smile. “We don’t socialize a lot, but I’ll be glad to tell her what you’ve said. I must admit that I’m a little surprised to hear that Ollie spoke well of Ethan. They didn’t always get along.”

  I nodded my head. “Kinfolk don’t, sometimes. But Ollie talked worse than he was. He put people off with his words, but they should have let it just roll off of them like I did.”

  “The way I heard it, he put people off because he promised to do landscaping for them and then didn’t do it.”

  “Yeah, I guess there was that, too. Ollie wasn’t a saint, but who is?” If I’d had a hat I’d have turned it in my hands about this time, but I had no hat so I touched my hair again and said, “Well, thanks for listening to me. Say, Ollie never told me exactly how he was related to you. Wasn’t he a cousin or something like that?”

  She studied me with thoughtful gray eyes, then said, “He was our half brother. Same father, different mothers.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, that explains why he felt the way he did about you. Blood is thicker than water, like they say.” I turned away and walked a few steps, then turned back. “Thanks again. I hope Ethan is feeling friendlier the next time we meet.”

  She had crossed her arms and her head was tipped slightly to one side as she looked at me. She was silent for a moment, then said, “Ethan isn’t friendly to strangers very often. He likes to be left alone.”

  I gave her a crooked smile. “That shotgun of his will sure as the dickens keep me away from now on.”

  “He drove you away with a shotgun?” She looked faintly alarmed.

  “Well, he didn’t point it at me but he did say it might go off by accident. You might tell him that if he keeps acting like that he’ll get himself into trouble. The next guy he threatens may go to the cops.”

  “You’re not going to do that, are you?” Her voice was now full of concern. “He’s been angry with the world since he left Connell Aerospace, but he’s not violent. I know he can sound that way, but he’s not. He’s my brother, and I know him. Please don’t file a complaint. I’ll have a talk with him.”

  “He worked for Connell Aerospace? Why was he angry when he left?”

  “Because he was accused of stealing from the company and got fired. He came back to the island and he’s been angry ever since. About what he calls modern times. He wants the world to go back to the way it used to be.”

  It was a common desire based on a fantasy about the Good Old Days, when things were uncomplicated and people were good and you didn’t have to lock your doors at night. Earlier generations probably rued the loss of those simpler, better times when the king was wise and just and people were happy and there was no war or famine or pestilence. A lot of people on Martha’s Vineyard were similarly nostalgic. To hear them talk you’d think that the hard-scrabble life of earlier islanders, when the roads were dirt and money was scarce, took place in a paradise now lost, and that modern civilization with its noise and bustle was ruining everything.

  I felt that way myself sometimes, although I knew my feelings were based on nonsense.

  “What does Connell think your brother stole?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. They get a lot of military contracts. Maybe it was something he was working on. He says he didn’t steal anything. I know he didn’t like the way technology that could improve things was being used to make them worse. Ethan went to England once and when he came home he said that the museums were all filled with examples of human ingenuity devoted to war. He said the museum at Greenwich was the only one where there were no weapons on display.

  “But he blames Ron Pierson personally for firing him. Pierson is CEO of Connell, you know. Ethan says it’s just another example of the family feud between Ron’s side of the family and ours. You should hear what my mother has to say about Ron. She hates every one of the Piersons, for that matter.”

  “Family fights can get pretty messy. Well, don’t worry about me going to the police. But do have a talk with your brother before he gets himself into trouble.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  “Did Conne
ll ever find the gadget that went missing?”

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  “I hate to think of the millions of dollars that get lost like that when the government does any kind of business. Makes you sorry you have to pay taxes.”

  “Ethan would agree with you about that.” She looked up into my eyes. “Is there anything else you want to know, Mr. Jackson?”

  She looked tired and sad, but she was an attractive woman. “No,” I said. “But if I think of anything, can I contact you again?”

  “Please do.”

  A lean, leathery, gray-haired woman appeared in the room behind her. She was wearing leather boots and jodhpurs and carried a hard hat in her hand. She could have been fifty or eighty. She looked at me with hooded eyes. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t think you still had company, Cheryl.”

  “This is Mr. Jackson, Mother. He was just leaving. Mr. Jackson, this is my mother.”

  “Nice meeting you,” I said. “I hope I haven’t interrupted your riding plans. That’s quite a horse. I don’t think he likes me.”

  “He and I get along very well, Mr. Jackson. If you’ll excuse me.” She turned and left the room.

  “My mother didn’t like my husband,” said Cheryl Bradford. “Since he died she still thinks I have poor taste in men.”

  “I’m sorry about your husband,” I said.

  “He’s been dead for many years, but thank you.”

  We exchanged good-byes and I drove away, feeling her eyes follow me.

  A woman named Eileen Graves wrote about Chilmark doings in a weekly newspaper column. She had been at it a long time and was one of several correspondents, mostly women, who kept islanders informed about the human-interest events in the various towns. She lived up by Beetlebung Corner, not too far from the Bradford farm. Since it was not yet noon I thought she might be home. I found her house and knocked on the door.

  The woman who came to the door was gray-haired and had rounded lines. She wore what my sister Margarite calls sensible shoes and what was once widely known as a housedress and maybe still is. A pair of rimless glasses sat on her nose.