A Shoot on Martha's Vineyard

by Philip R. Craig

  “I heard. I thought maybe he had some folks I could talk to.”

  “No folks here. Police say there’s some live up in Massachusetts some place that’re coming down, but they’re not here yet. They got to come back from Europe or Africa or one of those places, I guess.” She nodded toward the house. “I cleaned for him and kept an eye on the place when he was gone. Last time I seen him, he said he was going to work down on the beach. Huh. Guess that’s where they found him.”

  “How long did you work for him?” I asked.

  She studied me. “Since just after he built this place. I did the house and Moon did the yard. Brought in some money we could use. Guess that’ll all stop now.” Her face was finely boned, and I could see where her children had gotten their beauty.

  I looked at her car.

  “He must have paid pretty well,” I said.

  “None of your business what he paid,” she said, her frown deepening. “Whatever it was, we earned it. Right now you probably got better things to do than wait for his kin to show up.”

  “When are they coming?”

  “I don’t know. They’re off somewhere, like I said, and they got to come back over the ocean before they can come down here.”

  “It looks like you and Moonbeam took good care of things here. Maybe Ingalls’s people will hire you to keep on doing what you’re doing now. I hear they’ve got the money to do it if they decide to. You ever see a woman named Beth Harper up here?”

  She nodded toward the driveway. “Time for you to be moving along, mister. Cops told me to keep an eye on the place like usual till Mr. Ingalls’s family shows up.”

  “You ever see Beth Harper up here?”

  Her hands tightened on her elbows. “I don’t snoop in other people’s business, mister. You take yourself along, now.”

  “She and Ingalls were going to get married. And she must have a key to the house,” I said. “This morning she tried to take a shot at me with Ingalls’s pistol. The one he kept in the cabinet beside his bed. She must have come up here last night or this morning to get it, and you must have seen her.”

  “You get going, mister. Right now. Else I call the police.”

  “She must have been up here quite a lot. You ever see that pistol of his? You cleaned his house; you must have seen the pistol.”

  “I never seen no pistol! I clean and dust, but I don’t snoop! You’ve had your chance, mister. I’m calling the cops!” She turned to her car.

  I held up both hands. “No need. I’m on my way. Maybe I’ll see you again.”

  She stared at me and said nothing. I got into the Land Cruiser and drove down the long sandy lane to North Road. She followed me as far as her own hovel.

  What a sentry she was. Better than a dog, or a goose, or any of the other guardians people kept around their houses. If Ingalls had valued his privacy and property, she was worth whatever he paid her.

  It was certain that she knew Beth Harper, and almost certain that she had seen Beth come up to Ingalls’s house when Beth had gotten the pistol. The fact that she hadn’t interfered with Beth’s pistol-retrieving expedition meant that Beth was a regular visitor, not a stranger like me, and indirectly reinforced Beth’s claim that she and Ingalls had been engaged or were at least more than boss and underling.

  Joshua yawned and began to stir. I headed down east, toward Edgartown. At home, I changed Josh’s diaper yet again. How many years of diaper changing did I have in front of me, I wondered; how many tons of diapers would I wash and dry and fold and then wash again and dry and fold again before Josh caught on to using the pot? I’d read of people who trained their cats to use the toilet. Maybe I should use cat-training methods on Josh. Maybe I could train Oliver Underfoot and Velcro at the same time.

  Maybe not.

  I got Josh clean and sweet smelling just before Zee came through the door.

  We kissed; she hugged Josh and went to the bedroom to shed her uniform. When she reappeared, wearing shorts and an out-of-season Christmas T-shirt that said, “Just say HO,” I handed her her ice-cold Luksusowa martini. Motherhood had changed her, though. Instead of putting her feet up and savoring her drink as she once would have done, she sipped the drink, set it aside, and got down on the floor with her son. He gurgled at her, obviously pleased. She baby-talked back at him in spite of our agreement that we were always going to talk to him using adult tones and words.

  Is there a more universal image of humanity than that of mother and child? I sat back with my own martini and munched cheese, smoked bluefish, and crackers while I watched them. I didn’t blame her for wanting to be with him. After all, I’d enjoyed his company all day; now it was her turn. The cats came in through their flap in the door and took in the scene with a glance. They went into the kitchen for a quick snack, then came out and joined me as I observed my family. I was happy.

  Later, though, when Zee was sleeping, curled against me, as warm and sweet as our son in his better moments, I thought again of the death of Lawrence Ingalls and my business with Drew Mondry. They were intrusions into the life I preferred to live, and I wished they were gone. But of course they weren’t gone. Our lives are never free of intrusions. Maybe they consist of intrusions, and our planned lives are only intervals between the interruptions.

  The next morning, shortly after Zee went off to work, Intrusion Number One, Drew Mondry, drove into the yard.

  The first thing he said was “I don’t know quite how to say this, J.W., but I think you should know that a couple of detectives looked me up yesterday and asked me about what happened up there in Gay Head between you and that guy Ingalls who got killed on the beach.”

  He was uneasy, perhaps wondering if he were talking to a killer.

  I nodded. “I gave them your name.”

  “That’s what they said. I told them that Ingalls started the fight, and what happened after that. What people said and everything.”

  “Good.”

  “They never said whether they believed me or not.”

  “They never do. Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry you’re even involved.”

  He looked relieved. “I don’t mind being involved. I just hope that I haven’t gotten you into any trouble.”

  “None. You’ve probably helped, if anything. Besides, I’m not sure I’m in any trouble.”

  “Good, good.” He shook his head. “Hell of a thing. I meet him one day, and two days later he’s been murdered. The real thing is nothing like the movies, I can tell you that.”

  That was for sure. I changed the subject. “Did you bring the video?”

  He turned back to the Range Rover. “Here it is.” He handed me a videotape, apparently glad to be talking about his work instead of Ingalls’s death. “I’ve seen the Chappy beaches, so we’ll skip the first part of the film. But I want you to identify some of the other places, so you can take me to them later. A few look like possible locations, but I won’t know until I see them from the ground.”

  We went inside, where Joshua was in his crib, considering the world with his big eyes. He and Drew Mondry exchanged good-mornings as I put the tape into our VCR, then Mondry and I sat on the couch and looked at the film. As always, the island was lovely and fascinating from the air, the perspective from a plane exaggerating its shape and dimensions until it looked to be a completely different place than that portrayed on maps.

  The helicopter had taken off from the airport, then had circumnavigated the island, flying west along the beach to Gay Head, then back along the north shore to West Chop, then southeast over East Chop all the way to Edgartown, where it turned inland and flew over the center of the island, working its way west once again to Gay Head, then back, at last, to the airport.

  I identified the various great ponds on the south shore, and named the cliffs and beaches, including Lucy Vincent Beach, where the nude sunbathers waved at the helicopter as it passed over them. I pointed out the compound that once had been owned by the widow of a president, good fishing spots, and some
of the sites we’d already visited by car.

  Coming back along the north shore, I spotted Lawrence Ingalls’s house and ID’d the ruins of the old brick works, along with the many points, ponds, and the houses of some of the Vineyard’s more celebrated citizens. One of these belonged to Beverly Sills, who no longer sang, but whose tape of selections from La Traviata so often had given me great joy and made me pleased to have her share my island. Some day I was going to get together with Beverly, Pavarotti, Willie Nelson, and Emmylou Harris, and the five of us would cut a tape of my favorite C and W and opera songs. It would be a sure hit.

  We flew over the chops and then over Sengekontacket Pond, where I pointed out our house; then, as we went inland, I showed Mondry various sites, including the farm that belonged to John Skye, which Mondry immediately identified as one of the places he’d like to visit, especially after I told him of the big library inside the house. The new high school addition looked huge, and the roads of the many housing developments, some completed, many not, wound like snakes or worms through the trees.

  Mondry wanted to visit certain places for reasons that eluded me, since to my unprofessional eye the sites he selected seemed no more, and sometimes less, interesting than others. He made real notes and I made mental ones until the film ended as the helicopter returned to earth.

  I rewound the film and handed it to him. He seemed pleased with our hour together. “You can take me to the places we talked about?”

  “Most of them. A couple might be hard to get to because I don’t know the right roads to get us there. Besides, we may run into some locked gates. That one little stretch of beach you liked belongs to the Marshall Lea Foundation, and they don’t like to have cars on their property.”

  “Maybe I can call and get permission.”

  “Tell them there might be some money in it for them, and maybe they’ll let us in. Outfits like that always need more money than they have.” What an irony it would be if my advice brought the Marshall Lea people more money so they could buy more land that they wouldn’t let anybody use.

  I once read of a town that was politically divided between two groups known as the Asphalts and the Greens, the Asphalts being pro-development and the Greens being conservationists, who favored open spaces and no WalMarts. Before all this plover to-do, I’d have categorized myself as more Vineyard Green than Vineyard Asphalt, but the more suspicious I became of guys like Lawrence Ingalls and outfits like the Marshall Lea Foundation, the less that seemed to be the case. What to do, O Lord?

  “Let’s have a look at the places we can get to,” said Mondry. “I’ll try to get permission for the other spots later. Maybe we won’t even need to do that, if we’re lucky today.”

  “Why not?” I got Joshua and his gear ready for travel, and we went off in Drew’s Range Rover.

  He was, he explained, looking for locations for the treasure the film’s eighteenth-century pirates had supposedly buried and for which the modern characters were looking. For this, a beach with, say, some cliffs as background would be good. He also needed a house where the brains behind the efforts of the modern treasure hunters would be living, something with good exteriors and some space for planned action scenes in front of it. And he needed the large library he’d spoken of, where those brains would be symbolized by books, a computer, tables of papers, and piles of charts.

  I drove to two beach possibilities, and played with Joshua while Mondry walked about taking notes and shooting stills of the locations. Then we drove to John Skye’s house.

  Bonanza!

  Mondry knew instantly that this was the spot for exterior shots of the needed house.

  Mattie Skye came out as we went up to the door. I introduced her to Mondry.

  “Ah,” said Mattie, giving him her lovely smile. “J.W. said he was working for you.”

  “Drew, here, is looking at possible locations,” I said. “I thought this might be a place he could use.”

  “And it looks terrific!” said Mondry. “What a lovely old farm!”

  Mattie’s brows lifted. “What are you talking about, J.W.?”

  I told her. She was fascinated. “You mean you might shoot some scenes right here in our yard?”

  “Only with your permission and only if you allow us to compensate you for the inconvenience we’ll be causing you,” said Mondry. “You might get a kick out of us being here, but I assure you that it’ll be a pain in the neck, too.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “According to the grapevine, you guys won’t begin shooting till after Labor Day, and by then Mattie and John and the twins will be back in Weststock.”

  “Whoa, now.” Mattie grinned. “It’s true that John has to be back at work then, and that the girls have to be back in school, but I don’t have to be anywhere. I can stay right here and watch my house be immortalized!”

  Mondry eyed her appreciatively. “That might be even better. Maybe we can use you as an extra. I’m trying to get J.W.’s wife to do that. Maybe if you’ll do it, she will, too!”

  “I’ll speak to Zee,” said Mattie. “But I warn you, Mr. Mondry, if you use me and not my daughters, you may have a war on your hands!”

  Mondry smiled diplomatically. “I’ll be delighted to consider them, Mrs. Skye. If they’re half as lovely as their mother, I’m sure we can use them.”

  Slick Drew. Ever the charmer.

  “I want to show him John’s library, too,” I said. “Is the master at work?”

  “He won’t mind being interrupted, I’m sure. He’s been slaving away all morning, and he’ll be glad to have an excuse to stop. Come on in.” She led Drew Mondry into the house. “My husband,” she said, “is writing the definitive interpretation of Gawain and the Green Knight. He’s been at it forever.”

  “Ah,” said Mondry.

  John didn’t mind being interrupted, and willingly pushed himself away from his desk.

  After introductions, he waved a hand at his papers and his computer. “You know Gawain, Mr. Mondry? No? Well, you’re not alone. I’ve been studying him for forty years and I barely know him myself!”

  Mondry was sweeping the room with his eyes, taking in the walls of books, the huge desk, the ancient Oriental carpet, the charts of the Vineyard and the south coast of New England, and the rusty fencing mask mounted on a wall over triangulated foil, sabre, and épée, testimony to John’s long-ago undergraduate fencing career.

  “This is it!” he said, nodding. “Perfect! This is Neville Black’s library!”

  — 15 —

  Neville Black, it turned out, was the scholar of dubious morality whose expertise in the matter of pirate gold had led the motley crew of treasure hunters to the Vineyard in the script of the movie.

  “Ah,” said John Skye. “A scholar of dubious morality, eh? Not a rare sort of bird at all. Every college has its share of them!”

  John was fiftyish, tall and balding and unconcerned about the small potbelly he was carrying around with him. Emergency rations in case of atomic attack, he said. He was a professor of medieval literature at Weststock College, and a notable scholar, although you’d never know it from talking to him. Rather, he was inclined to make light of academia and the pettiness and pretentiousness of its citizens, including himself. Teaching esoteric subjects such as his own, he was fond of saying, was the closest thing there was to not working at all, since very few people could tell whether you were doing anything worthwhile (or anything at all, for that matter), and all you had to do to earn a reputation was show up and look alternately vague and intent. The groves of academe flourished, he said, because of the great amount of manure spread by their inhabitants.

  But I’d seen his books in the library of my old alma mater, Northeastern University, and in the other libraries where I’d studied while chasing an education and being a Boston cop, so I knew he had more of a reputation than he claimed. If he didn’t take himself very seriously, other people did.

  Now I looked down at Joshua, who was nestled in the chest pack I’d r
igged so I could carry him and still have both hands free for important things like fishing. “Your mom and I got married outside in the yard,” I said. “Did you know that?”

  He hadn’t known, he said, but he did now.

  Drew Mondry was walking around the room, snapping pictures and nodding.

  “Ah, the silver screen! You’ll be a famous at last,” I said to John.

  “Or my library will be, at least,” said John. “I can bask in the reflected glory.”

  “The tour buses will stop here, and people wearing polyester will get out and take pictures of your house. You can make them pay a fee to see inside.”

  “I’ll be able to retire and send the twins to private schools.”

  “We’ll travel during the off season,” said Mattie. “I’ll have a maid all year, and somebody who does nothing else but clean the bathrooms and wash windows.”

  Behind us, a door opened and the twins came in from wherever they’d been. The barn, probably, working on something having to do with their horses.

  “Hi, J.W.,” said Jen or Jill. “Hi, there, Joshua.” She and her sister came up and smiled at Joshua, who stared back.

  “You’re very thoughtful today,” said the twin.

  He agreed that he was.

  Drew Mondry was looking at the twins, who were a pretty pair. I introduced them to one another. “These are the two problems I was telling you about,” I said to Mondry. “They come with the house, unfortunately, and they vant to be stars.”

  “Oh!” said a twin, staring at Mondry. “You’re the movie guy!”

  Mondry produced his charm. “I’m the movie guy. And you’re the famous twins I’ve heard so much about.” The famous twins gave me quick glances, wondering what I had been saying about them. I wondered, too, since I couldn’t remember saying much of anything.

  “We want to be in your movie!” said one of them, looking back at Mondry and getting right to the point.

  “We think it would be lots of fun!” said the other.

  “It can be fun,” said Mondry. “I don’t do casting, but I know the people who do. I think they might want to use you. You and your mother and maybe your father, too.” He smiled at John and Mattie. “Especially if we use your house for a location.”