Murder at a Vineyard Mansion

by Philip R. Craig

  I thanked my informant for her help and walked down Main, intending to go to the Dock Street Coffee Shop. A police cruiser was parked in front of the hardware store and when I got to the four corners, I found the Chief standing by the bank overseeing a young summer cop who was practicing directing traffic before very many cars were actually on the street. I thought the young cop was doing pretty well and said so.

  “So far,” said the Chief. “We’ll see how she does when the tourists wake up and come downtown.”

  “I have some news for you,” I said. “My sources tell me that the Silencer has decided to retire.”

  The Chief gave me a cool stare. “Is that a fact? Who are your sources?”

  “They prefer to remain anonymous.”

  “How anonymous will they be if I stick you in front of a judge?”

  “I’ll be glad to testify under oath, but I should tell you that I’ve already forgotten this conversation.”

  The Chief was watching his summer cop again. “I never have much confidence in anonymous sources or high-level spokespersons who decline to be identified.”

  “In this case the proof will be in the pudding. If more sound systems get melted, you’ll know my sources were wrong. If they stop getting fried, you’ll know they were right.”

  “I hope they’re right,” said the Chief. “My oldest grandchildren love that ear-busting hard rock and hip-hop or whatever they call it, but I hate it. It gives me a headache. Why don’t people listen to Harry James anymore?”

  I didn’t know and said so before going on down to the Dock Street, where I worked my way through a cup of coffee and a bagel while I stacked ideas into various configurations.

  Across the parking lot, the Yacht Club’s lately rebuilt wing looked shiny and new in contrast to the weathered shingle exterior of the rest of the building.

  Yachting was an exception to the rule that good games were cheap. Zee and I owned a catboat but I doubted if the Shirley J qualified as a yacht or that I could be thought of as a yachtsman. If I could, why hadn’t I been invited to join the Yacht Club? After all, unlike some members, we actually had a boat. Maybe if I wore socks with my boat shoes I’d catch the eye of the membership committee.

  Probably not.

  I could have used more thinking time, but the dreaded meter maids and men were already abroad in the streets of Edgartown and would soon be zeroing in on my truck, so I finished my food, walked to the truck, and drove it to a new location. Then I walked back to the Chief.

  “You again. What is it this time?”

  “Anything new in the murder investigation?”

  “Nothing since the last time you asked me that question, but we’re still on the job and we’ll find the perp eventually. I don’t suppose your anonymous sources know who done it and can save us some time.”

  “I’m not sure what the anonymous sources know, but I can tell you what I’ve been doing and what I think.”

  “You already told me some of your life story.”

  “There’s more.”

  The Chief looked up and down the street the way cops do without thinking about it, then put his back against the wall of the bank and his eyes back on the summer cop. “Go ahead.”

  I leaned on the bricks beside him and told him almost everything about the people I’d seen and what I’d observed or heard. I didn’t tell him about the HPM device I’d spotted and the Silencer conversation I’d had with Ethan Bradford. I don’t tell anybody everything.

  When I was through we were both silent for a while.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally. “You could be right, but it’s mostly guesswork. The pieces seem to fit, but a good defense lawyer could probably make mincemeat of the case. It’s too circumstantial. It could mean nothing. The D.A. isn’t about to go to court just to look like a fool.”

  “It’s not all circumstantial.”

  “I don’t trust your ten-cent psychology, either. We’d have our shrink swearing to one thing and they’d have their shrink swearing just the opposite.”

  He was right about that. Dueling psychiatrists were common sights in court cases, which was evidence to me that their profession was a dubious one at best.

  I said, “There’s also motive and opportunity and a weapon.”

  “There’s no weapon.”

  “There’s an implied weapon.”

  “Implied isn’t good enough and you know it. We need one with bloodstains.”

  We were again quiet for a time. Then I said, “Wire me and maybe I can get a confession.”

  “And maybe you can’t. Maybe all you’ll do is spook the quarry. Or maybe you’ll get your head smashed in like Mattes and Hobbes.”

  “Ollie and Harold weren’t expecting trouble. I will be. My head will be fine.”

  “No,” said the Chief. “It’s too chancy. Go home and leave this to us. You’ve done enough already. We’ll take it from here.”

  “I think you should wire me.”

  “No. Now go home and stay there. Weed your garden or mow the lawn or something while I get in touch with Dom Agganis.”

  He walked toward the cruiser.

  How did he know my lawn needed mowing?

  I watched the summer cop for a while, then I went to my truck and drove to Vineyard Electronics in Vineyard Haven, where I bought a small battery-powered tape recorder.

  26

  “Ah, Vanity,” said the dying but ever ironic Cyrano, “I knew you’d overthrow me in the end.” I was familiar with vanity. Mine said that I was the one to finish what I’d started, so for what seemed like the millionth time I drove up-island.

  The tape recorder was duct-taped to my ribs, under my left arm; its mike was taped to my chest, about level with the mouth of a medium-sized person. I could turn the recorder on by casually crossing my arms and touching a switch.

  The Chief thought my plan could be dangerous, but vanity said that all I had to do was be careful. I even enjoyed feeling a little nervous, thinking that it was good to feel that way because it would make me more alert.

  It was another lovely island day, with a warm sun and high, thin clouds making the sky a pale blue. As I turned down the Bradford driveway I could see the fenced green fields reaching down to the marshes, beyond which the blue ocean lapped at the yellow sand. Emerald and gold and sapphire. Vineyard colors. There were horses in the fields, and outside the pasture fences forests swayed gently in a soft southwest wind.

  Cheryl’s and Sarah’s cars were in the yard. I parked between them and took a minute to examine Sarah’s SUV. There was sand inside the rear bumper and under the fenders. I walked to the house, where Cheryl answered my knock. I told her I wanted to speak with her mother. She pointed to the barn.

  “She’s there. She’s just come in from a ride.”

  “How’s she feeling?”

  Cheryl made a small gesture with her hands. “She has good days and bad ones. Lately there have been more bad days. She has medication for the pain but it doesn’t always do the job. But she won’t stop living her life. She has a will of iron.”

  “She can whack a softball a long way.”

  “They say she’ll be strong right up to the last. When her time comes, it will come fast. One day she’ll be here and the next she won’t. She knows it and she has no self-pity. I’m not as strong.” She paused and looked at me with eyes as innocent as a child’s. “I just wish she was the kind of person who’d led a happy life, but she isn’t and she never was, not even before this sickness. And now it’s too late for her. Don’t you think you should be happy whenever you can?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s never been unhappy, she’s just never been happy.”

  Anhedonia may not be as rare as we think. “For some people being happy is a risk they don’t want to take,” I said.

  “It’s one I’ll take. I’m not happy now but I’ve been happy and I want to be happy again. I hope I will be.” She rubbed a hand across her mouth and brushed her fingers under her eyes.<
br />
  “I hope so too,” I said.

  “Why do you want to see my mother?”

  “I just want to ask her a couple of questions. It won’t take long.”

  “I’ll go down with you.”

  “No, that’s all right. I can find my way.”

  I walked down to the barn and went inside. Sarah was in the same stall where previously I’d seen Cheryl. Like Cheryl, she was currycombing a horse, a red stallion that looked at me with wide animal eyes and snorted. Sarah glanced at me and put away her currycombs.

  I recognized the stallion as the one I’d seen tied to the fence a few days earlier. I crossed my arms and turned on the tape recorder. “Nice horse,” I said, not getting too close.

  “Not too nice,” she said. “But he’s fine once you show him who’s boss. He doesn’t give me any trouble.”

  I was sure he didn’t.

  “Does he always lay his ears back and stamp his feet like that when he sees strangers?” I asked.

  She slipped out of the stall and shut the gate behind her before the stallion could follow. “Only when they’re men,” she said. “He doesn’t like men.”

  “I understand that you don’t either,” I said.

  “What’s to like?” Her voice was without emotion. She cared nothing about the issue. She didn’t care about me, either.

  “I wondered if you trained him to feel the way you do. Is that possible?”

  Her eyes were fearless. “It could probably be done.”

  “How would you do it? Dress in men’s clothing and beat him from the time he was a colt? Then change clothes and succor him as a woman?”

  “That might work. And you could wear men’s cologne when you beat him and women’s perfume when you healed him and cared for him. Or you might just hire some low-life man to do the beating. It wouldn’t be hard to find one.”

  Unfortunately, she was probably right about that. Most people wouldn’t take such a job, but there were always a few who as children were killers of cats and other small animals and who now were adults who would enjoy brutalizing horses, especially if there was money in it.

  The stallion snorted and came up to the gate of the stall, ears back, tossing his beautiful hate-filled head. I retreated until my back was against a timber supporting the barn’s loft. My discomfort hurried my first question. Her answer and the ones that followed kept me going with increasing confidence.

  “Mrs. Bradford, why didn’t you tell your daughter to break off her relationship with Harold Hobbes?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. Ethan told you about them. You drove Cheryl away from every other man in her life, but you never even told her you knew about Harold. What was different about Harold?”

  “Ethan lied to you. Men lie like rugs. It’s their nature.”

  “I don’t think so. He was trying to get into your good graces. He wants you to love him.”

  “He’s my son. He doesn’t need to get into my good graces.”

  “He thinks he does. He thinks you hate him like you hate other men. You knew about Harold but you didn’t tell Cheryl that you knew, and there had to be a reason. The reason was murder. You didn’t want your daughter to know you killed her lover.”

  “You watch too many soap operas.”

  “Did you know Hobbes had a vasectomy not long before he was killed?”

  For the first time she showed some emotion. “The rotten bastard!”

  “You can guess why he had the operation, can’t you?”

  Her mouth became a tight, thin line across her face. She said nothing.

  “I think we both know why,” I said. “He really was in love with Cheryl. They planned to go away together. But he knew something that she didn’t know and that he didn’t want her to know: that she was his half sister. He got the vasectomy to guarantee that they’d never have children. If there are no children, the arguments against incest don’t mean much except as religious tenets or social conventions. Harold wasn’t religious and he flouted social convention.” I looked into her furious eyes. “Your daughter didn’t know that she and Harold had the same father, but you did. Your philandering husband slept with every woman he could find, including Maud Mayhew.”

  Her voice was a hiss. “Maud’s a slut. Always was. And her brat was worse than his father.”

  “Ollie Mattes was another of his bastards.”

  “Yes. Another toad.”

  “And Ron Pierson was just as bad.”

  “Worse. He thinks his money makes him better than my family. He’s building that château just to rub our faces in it.”

  I half imagined venom coming from her fangs.

  “When some vandal smashed all of the windows in that house, a lot of people were pleased. But you wanted more, so you went there to finish the job. You drove over Norton’s Point Beach so the ferryman couldn’t testify that you’d ridden the On Time that evening. What did you have in mind for Pierson’s house? Fire?”

  She leaned against the gate of the stall and studied me with ancient, fearless eyes. “What if I did?”

  “Ollie Mattes had just been hired as watchman and he was there when you arrived. You didn’t expect him, but you knew each other. He turned his back and you hit him.”

  “You’re imagining things.”

  “You’re the right height and you’re strong and you hated both Ollie and Ron Pierson. I think you probably used your baseball bat on Ollie. I saw you hit a softball a long way from the southpaw side of the plate. Whoever killed Ollie was left-handed and about your size. I don’t know if you meant to kill him, but I think you must have panicked after you hit him. You rolled his body down the bluff to make it look like an accident, and you left then because you didn’t dare hang around long enough to torch the place. You went home the way you’d come.”

  “I’ve never driven on the beach in my life.”

  “The sand under your SUV says different.”

  “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”

  “No smarter than the cops, just a few minutes ahead of them. They’ll be along. You killed Harold Hobbes, too, when you found out about him and your daughter. You drove to his house and beat his head in. Did you break your bat that time, or was it just so bloody that you couldn’t get it clean? You had a brand-new one when I saw you play ball.”

  “They’ll never find the old one because I burned it,” she said. “You’re boring me.” But she didn’t look bored.

  “Ollie’s death might have been an accident,” I said, “but you made sure of Harold’s because you hated him the most of all. You’d hated him before on general principles but now he was having incestuous sex with your simple, innocent daughter, a woman he knew was his half sister. You can argue that you saved her from a totally immoral predator. Your motive might seem noble to the judge and jury who try you. It might get you less than a life sentence.”

  She looked almost serene. “I won’t be serving any sentence at all, Mr. Jackson. Do you know why? Because I’m dying. That’s also why you can’t threaten me in any way. In the eyes of the law I may be a murderer, but when you’re already dying you’re beyond the law and you can do things other people wouldn’t dare do. It makes you free.” She smiled icily. “It lets you kill people who deserve it, for instance. My daughter is safe now and she’ll never know that she was seduced by her own worthless brother.”

  “Your killing days are over now,” I said.

  Her thin lips curled. “I don’t know how much intelligence it took for you to find me out, but it couldn’t have taken much because men are not very bright, so I imagine that others will soon be coming along to arrest me. They too will fail to frighten me.”

  “They may not frighten you, but they can put you in jail for the last days of your life.”

  She smiled a skeletal smile. “Perhaps, but you won’t be there to see it happen.” And so saying she threw open the gate of the stall and the great red stallion made a feral sound a
nd rushed at me, all teeth and flying hooves.

  I didn’t have time to think or to panic. I ducked behind the post I was leaning on, and the furious horse, mane flying, smashed into it, bounced to one side, and came around after me, neck stretched out, teeth and front hooves reaching for me.

  Sarah Bradford filled my eyes. She stood like a statue beside the open gate of the stall. I plunged across the space between us and grabbed at her arm to pull her into the stall, where we’d be safe. But she jerked away, so I went in by myself and slammed the gate shut behind me.

  The stallion was a burst of lightning, his flashing hooves were thunder, his eyes were mad. He crashed into the gate but it held; he reared and smashed at it with his hooves. I backed to the far wall.

  Frustrated, the horse danced away and Sarah, smiling like a wolf, said, “I’ll just unlock this gate for him.” She turned toward the gate and reached for the latch, but as she did so the stallion screamed and rushed forward once again. It reared and slashed at the gate with those great hooves and struck Sarah. She fell and the stallion, wild-eyed, pounded her and then pounded what had once been her until, at last, it snorted and sidestepped away, its ears flat, its forelegs covered with blood.

  There was a door leading from the stall out into the corral, and I went out that way and up to the house to call the Chilmark police.

  27

  Two weeks later Zee and I were lying side by side on the old bedspread that serves as our beach blanket while the kids were making casts with their little rods. They were not having any more luck than Zee and I had had. If there were any fish out there, they didn’t care for the bait we were offering them.

  We were on East Beach, about halfway between the Jetties and the point of Cape Pogue, and up and down the beach on either side of us were other SUVs and people on beach blankets and in the water, and fishermen also failing to catch fish. Some people, like me, were enjoying a postluncheon beer.