We parked in the approved lot and walked into the Plane View restaurant, where the coffee is always hot and the food is good and also cheap by island standards. On the field there were many parked planes, including a couple of commercial jets. Not there were the glider and two biplanes, one white, one red, that flew out of the Katama airport during the tourist season.
All summer long, one or both of the planes could be seen flying around the island, carrying sight-seeing passengers. Sometimes the red one entertained with loops and slides and rolls and spins, and I wondered what it must be like to be in the cockpit while all that was going on. But I never wondered enough to hire the plane and pilot to take me up and do those things. I’m acrophobic enough to get the shakes on high buildings; I don’t need to be upside down in an open-cockpit airplane.
We sat down and had coffee and chatted with the few people who were there. They were friendly to Clay when I introduced him but were mostly interested in talking about the girl with the strawberry hair.
“I hear the cops are saying it’s murder.”
“I ain’t heard that. All I heard is that they found the girl’s body.”
“Well, she sure as hell didn’t bury herself in that old cellar hole. Somebody else did that.”
“I hear the Oak Bluffs police and the state cops are asking all kinds of questions along Circuit Ave.”
“Well, they got a body now. They didn’t have that before. All they had was a missing person, and people leave the island all the time without telling anybody.”
“I don’t know about that. They may leave, but they tell somebody. They don’t just run off.”
“This Gibson woman didn’t tell nobody nothing. And now we know why.”
“You ever see her, up at the Fireside? Good-looker. All that long red hair. Nice, too. Always a smile.”
“I hear the cops are talking with that fella they call Bonzo. You know, the one that pushes a broom and cleans tables. Sort of a half-wit.”
“We got our share of those on this island.” Laughter and nodding heads.
“Yeah, well, I guess that this Bonzo is what the cops call ‘a person of interest.’ That’s somewhere between being innocent and being a suspect.”
“They don’t have enough on him to arrest him, but they’ve got him under a magnifying glass. You know him, J.W.?”
“I know him,” I said. “He’s a friend of mine.”
“Oh.” There was some quiet coffee drinking.
“Bonzo wouldn’t hurt a fly,” I said.
“I don’t think the cops are so sure of that,” said a gray-haired man, screwing his courage to the sticking point.
I felt a little flicker of anger. “The police are interested in anybody who might have known the girl. They might want to talk with you, for instance.”
“Me! What for?”
“You just said she was good-looking and you mentioned her long red hair and her smile. The police might wonder how you know she was nice and just how much she interested you.”
“Now just a damned minute! What the hell are you saying?” He pushed himself away from his table.
I waved him back into his chair. “Take it easy, Rod. I thought she was pretty, too, and so did everybody else who saw her. The point is that the police are interested in anybody who might have known her, including you and me. They’re not just interested in Bonzo. As for me, I know you didn’t kill her and I know Bonzo didn’t, either. Let’s wait for an official statement about cause of death before we decide who did it.”
Rod sat down and drank some coffee.
“Hell of a note,” he said, almost to himself. “Man says something nice about a woman, next thing you know he’s a damned murder suspect.”
“You’re not a murder suspect, Rod,” said the man sitting across from him.
“Hell of a note,” said Rod.
“I seen her up there at the Fireside, myself,” said his companion. “She brought me and the wife beer and burgers where we was sitting in a booth. I thought she was pretty, too, and nice, but that don’t mean I’m a suspect. You neither. Drink your coffee and take it easy.”
“Let’s change the subject,” said someone. “How about them Sox?”
Normally that would have been a topic worthy of argument, but I had chilled the room and voices didn’t rise again until I was shutting the door behind me as Clay and I left.
“If you don’t mind some friendly advice,” said Clay as we drove away, “I think you should give up your plans to become a politician.”
“Wise words. I’ll imitate Udall. If nominated, I’ll run to Mexico. If elected, I’ll fight extradition.”
“Smart. What’s next on our agenda?”
“Let’s drive by the Harbor View. The parking lot is out back. We can check and see if there’s a yellow Mercedes convertible with California plates parked there.”
“Why should we do that?”
“Because if Jack and Mickey are at the hotel, they aren’t someplace else. Like at Ted Overhill’s house, for instance. So if you feel like going there and parking behind his barn so nobody can see your truck, you can probably get some work done on the boat without risking your neck. I advise you to avoid power tools, so you’ll be able to hear a car if one drives in, and have time to scat.”
“I’m doing a lot of scatting lately, but I would like to get back to work on the boat. Another few weeks and she’ll be ready to launch.”
“You’re ahead of schedule.”
“Ted’s got his arm back and works evenings after he gets home from landscaping. Two men get a lot more done than just one.”
We circled the Harbor View once just to make sure no yellow convertibles were parked in front of the hotel. None was, so I drove into the parking lot where, lo! the Mercedes, looking a bit garish amid staid New England vehicles, was right where I had hoped it would be.
I drove out the back way to Fuller Street, where I pointed out Manny Fonseca’s woodworking shop. “You might get on with Manny when you finish the schooner,” I said. “He usually works alone, but if he sees what you can do, he might make an exception.”
“This is the same Manny Fonseca who’s coaching Zee how to shoot and wants her to try out for the Olympics?”
“The very same. He can’t get over how she took to pistol shooting. He says she’s a natural and is getting even better than he is even though she doesn’t have his experience and doesn’t approve of guns.”
“I don’t approve of them either, but when I was a kid out in Wichita, my dad made sure I knew how to shoot. Incidentally, while I was nosing around the house last night I found a box of shotgun shells but no shotgun.”
“That’s because John’s guns are in my gun cabinet so none of the local thieves will sneak into his house and steal them while I’m not looking.”
“You have local thieves?”
“We have all the perps you’ll find anywhere else, in about the same population proportion. This may be Eden but it has rocks with snakes living under them.”
“My, my,” said Clay. “Does the Chamber of Commerce know about this?”
“I’ve never seen it advertised.”
We drove to John Skye’s farm and Clay got out of my truck.
I opened my window. “Do you want a shotgun to go with those shells? Would that make you feel better?”
He hesitated. “No…yes…maybe. Sure. You know what the NRA says about it being better to have your trusty six-gun by your side and not need it than to need it and not have it.”
That phrase would probably be the NRA’s principal contribution to the next edition of Bartlett’s.
“Would you rather have a pistol?”
“No. Some gunslinging magazine I read a long time ago asked a bunch of shootists what weapon they’d choose if they could only have one. A shotgun won hands down. You can hunt big game or little birds, or you can shoot people with a fair chance of hitting them. They didn’t have shotgun guards on stagecoaches for no reason, you know. Not many bad
men liked the idea of going up against a double-barreled twelve-gauge. That’s probably still true.”
“Well, I have my father’s old double-barreled Browning but you’ll be getting a Remington pump that’ll hold three shells. Massachusetts, in its wisdom, believes that limiting the size of the magazine makes civilization safer.”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Three should be more than enough. I don’t plan on shooting anybody. The gun will be just like a pacifier. It’ll make me feel loved.”
“As another sign of love, I’ll follow you to Ted’s place.”
“No need, but okay.”
He got into the Bronco and drove to Ted’s barn, where he parked in back, out of sight.
I turned around and drove home. I didn’t see any yellow convertibles of any make.
15
I fed Oliver Underfoot and Velcro, answered their questions about where I’d been and what I’d been doing, then got out my own Remington 12-gauge pump and a couple of boxes of shells and took the weapon and ammo to John Skye’s house. No need, I thought, to insert one of John’s weapons into the game we were playing; I’d use my own.
At John’s house I put the gun and ammunition in Clay’s bedroom closet, then drove to the Edgartown library, where, since it was March and not July, I found a convenient parking place on North Water Street. Bonzo was on my mind. I needed to help him, and the library was a good place to start.
I’m very fond of libraries because they’re full of books and are run by people who are smart, who like their work, and who, unlike many public employees, welcome customers. Our family computer can produce all sorts of information, but a library has charm and warmth, two characteristics the computer lacks. Besides, I wanted information I couldn’t get, or at least couldn’t find, on the computer, being an antigeek with regard to both talent and temperament, to say nothing of my age. Already my ten-year-old son, Joshua, could run computer rings around me, and his little sister, Diana, was not far behind. Both of them, however, were in school that day, so to the library I had come.
Amelia Samson was at the desk. “What can I do for you, J.W.?” she asked.
“A year ago a woman named Nadine Gibson disappeared from Oak Bluffs. There was some newspaper coverage of the case. I’d like to see the local papers from that period.”
“Oh,” she said. “The radio says they’ve found her body. I remember the original stories. For a few days she was news, but then she wasn’t anymore. I guess the police decided there wasn’t any reason to pursue it further at the time. Now they will.”
“Yes.”
“It’s not like that Brazilian man who disappeared. His roommate cleaned out his bank account and went back to Brazil. The police are still interested in the roommate even though they’ve never found the body of the missing man.”
I nodded. It was a recent case, but since the United States had no extradition treaty with Brazil and since there was no body, the chances were that the crime, if there was one, would never be officially solved and the perp would live happily ever after.
“Anyway,” said Amelia, “we have old copies of the Gazette and the Times on microfilm. Do you know how to use our machines?”
“I think I can figure them out.”
I could and did. Sharing the front pages with reports of a March snowstorm were stories of the missing woman. They were brief since no crime had ever been proved and no body had ever turned up. Still, they contained information I’d forgotten, some part of which had been gained from local people who knew her. The Gazette reporter was wise enough to include her sources in her story.
Nadine Gibson was twenty-two years old, five seven, and about one hundred twenty pounds. She was considered pretty and personable, and was notable for her long, strawberry red hair. She had lived for a while in the Boston area, had attended Tufts University for a time, and had come to the island the summer before her disappearance, along with several thousand other young people about her age, looking for work. She’d first found a job waitressing in a restaurant where the tips were good and then, after the summer ended and the restaurant closed, had found a winter job bartending and waitressing in the Fireside, where she was a favorite of the mostly male customers who were the regulars there. Her boss liked her and said she was a good, dependable worker.
She had a boyfriend by then, a Harvard student who aspired to be the next Howard Roark and who was taking a year off from his studies to work as an apprentice in a Vineyard Haven architect’s office. The two young people lived together in a year-round rental at the west end of the Camp Meeting Grounds, not far from Dukes County Avenue.
She and the boyfriend had a spat and broke up before she disappeared, and the boy had packed his bag and gone home to Newton to lick his wounds. When Nadine disappeared, naturally he was high up on the list of suspects but had a perfect alibi: his sympathetic mother, who was glad to have him free of the grasp of the redheaded bartender, had flown with him to Scottsdale for two weeks so his heart could mend while he visited Taliesin West and other notable architectural sites of interest between rounds of golf with Mom.
A woman neighbor in the Camp Meeting Grounds who was friendly with Nadine had noticed that after the snowstorm there were no footprints leading from the girl’s house and, after a couple of days, had inquired at the Fireside and learned that she’d missed work for those days. Alarmed, the neighbor had contacted the police, and not much later, Nadine had officially become a missing person.
She’d last been seen leaving the Fireside after closing hours. She’d been in good spirits and was presumably planning on walking home through the narrow, winding Victorian streets of the Camp Meeting Grounds to her own little gingerbread cottage at the far end. It was her habit to do that, and no one gave it a thought.
And, at the time the stories were written, no one had seen her since.
The police had gotten her landlord to open the door of her house, wherein their most suspicious finding was what seemed to be most of her clothes and goods. No signs of foul play were seen.
The Oak Bluffs police had contacted the Newton police, who had gone to the boy’s house and learned from his father that the boy had gone out west several days before and wouldn’t be home for several more. The OBPD had then tracked down Nadine’s family, using her employment forms as a guide, and learned that they lived in Rhode Island and thought their daughter was still on the island but, because she had an independent streak and didn’t always keep them informed about her travels, couldn’t guess where she might be now.
The police had gone up and down Circuit Avenue and through the Camp Meeting Grounds asking if anyone knew anything, but no one admitted to seeing the woman that night or had useful information. The owner and employees of the Fireside similarly knew nothing. The girl with the strawberry hair had walked into the March night and had disappeared.
Until now.
I sat back in my chair and thought about what I’d read. I wanted to see the police reports but didn’t think I could get my hands on them since the case was now officially open and I didn’t have a friend in the department who might be persuaded to slip them to me for a few minutes unofficially.
That left the reporters who had written the stories and who certainly had learned more than had appeared in print. The reporter for the Gazette was someone I knew pretty well, although not as well nowadays as I had before I’d met Zee. Susan Bancroft and I had been an item for a while long ago and, though a lot of water had flowed under the bridge since then and both of us were now married to other people, we were still friends.
I got up and walked out of the library. As I passed Amelia Samson, she asked, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Some of it. Thanks.”
Too lazy to walk to the Gazette office, I drove there and parked on Summer Street just beyond Davis. Two parking spots right where I wanted them in a single day. It must be winter on Martha’s Vineyard.
Susan was at her desk, which was piled with papers stacked around
her computer. She stopped pecking at the keys when I appeared.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I said. “People will start to talk. How can you find anything in this mess?”
“It may look like chaos to you, but everything is in perfect order. And who cares if people talk?”
“Not me,” I said. “It might be good for my reputation, in fact. I’m becoming known as a hopeless, stay-at-home fuddy-duddy. The bartenders all over the island have forgotten my name.”
“That’s what you get for being married and having kids. It happened to me, too; it happens to us all. What brings you here to the inner sanctum of the fourth estate?”
“Information. You heard about finding that red-haired body up in Oak Bluffs?”
Her antennae went up immediately. “The presumed remains of the Gibson girl? I’ve heard. I’ve also heard that your friend Bonzo is a prime suspect. Do you know anything about that?”
“A little, but I want to know more.”
She pointed at a chair piled with papers. “Put that stuff on the floor and sit down. You must think I know something you don’t. I’ll trade you what I have for what you’ve got, which is…what?”
I sat down. “I just came from the library, where I read last year’s accounts of the search for the girl. I want to know what you know that didn’t get into the stories.”
“You’re in luck. I’ve been going over that material myself as background for the story I’m writing this week. Before we get into that, though, what have you got for me?”
Ever the reporter looking for an edge on her rival writers. But I wanted her information, so I told her about the call from Bonzo’s mother and about what had happened after that. As I talked, she scribbled notes the old-fashioned way. When I was done, she said, “You’re pretty sure it was Nadine Gibson’s hair in that bird’s nest?”
“The lab will determine that, but I’d say it’s a pretty sure thing. Not many people have hair like that.”
“And you don’t think your pal Bonzo had anything to do with her disappearance?”
“Not in a million years.”
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