A Shoot on Martha's Vineyard

by Philip R. Craig

  “Ah,” said Zee, stripping down to her wee bikini, “just what the doctor ordered.” She stretched her brown self out on the blanket.

  “Nice bod,” I said, leering, as I peeled down to my own bathing suit.

  “Come down here and say that, if you dare.”

  I dared.

  After a while, a 4 x 4 came along from Wasque, headed toward Cape Pogue. We untangled before it got to us. Iowa was driving and Walter was beside him. They were two guys who almost lived on the beach. They waved and kept driving. We waved back.

  “These constant interruptions are destroying our marriage,” said Zee. “Go catch us a fish.” She lay back and closed her eyes.

  I got to my feet and looked down at her. No wonder Drew Mondry wanted her in his movie. Botticelli would have wanted her in his, if they’d had them in his day.

  I looked at Joshua, who took his attention off his own feet, which were waving in the air, to look back. “You’re in charge,” I said.

  I got my rod off the roof rack, walked down the beach a little way, and made my cast. No bluefish took my good Roberts plug. I cast again. Again, no bluefish. I cast again. Still no bluefish.

  I fished for half an hour and caught nothing. Back at the bedspread, Zee kept a partially shut eye on Joshua, who was back to keeping his own eyes on his fascinating feet. I fished some more. One of the nicest things about fishing is that you don’t have to catch fish to have fun. If you just want fish, you can get them easier and cheaper at the A & P.

  Another thing about fishing when there are no fish is that you can look around at the scenery, feel the breeze, and, if you like, think about something else. I thought about my plans for later in the day.

  When I walked back to the truck, Zee was changing a diaper.

  “What is it about this kid?” she asked. “I’m sure he didn’t inherit this habit from me. He must have gotten it from you.”

  “All us manly men are full of that stuff,” I said.

  “How could I have forgotten? I knew that. Every woman knows that.” She picked up powdered, sweet-smelling Joshua and touched her finger to his nose. “When the girls start hanging around you in a few years, I’m going to tell them all about this diaper business. What do you think of that?”

  Shameless Joshua smiled up at her and said he thought it was a good idea.

  We lay down on the bedspread and let the August sun improve our tans. Things were good, the way they were supposed to be. I turned off my brain and was happy lying there, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, beside warm, brown-skinned Zee.

  But life wears a Janus face; like the two-faced god, it tenders as many endings as beginnings, and offers portals that lead to both light and darkness. So after the sun reached its zenith and we finished lunch, it was time to leave the lovely, lonely beach and head back to a more cluttered, less pristine reality. We packed up and headed home.

  As we passed Wasque Point and its eternal fishermen, and went west on Norton’s Point Beach, past the dozens of parked 4 x 4’s and the hundreds of people soaking up the August sun, I told Zee what I planned to do.

  “Do you really need to get into the house?” she asked. “Won’t it look suspicious, especially to that new state cop?”

  “Otero can’t get much more suspicious,” I said. “And I do want to get into the house. Maybe something in Ingalls’s past got him killed, and maybe there’s something in the house that will give me a clue.”

  “I don’t like it,” she said.

  I pulled out onto the pavement at Katama and shifted into two-wheel drive. “It’s not illegal and it’s not dangerous,” I said.

  “I still don’t like it,” said Zee, her jaw seeming to become harder. “I don’t want that Otero woman to have another reason for squinting her eyes at you!”

  Had Olive Otero really been squinting at me? I looked at Joshua, who was in his mother’s lap.

  “What do you think, Josh?” I asked. “Should I go or not?”

  Smart Joshua, recognizing a no-win situation when he was in one, said nothing.

  “There,” I said to Zee. “He agrees with me.” “He does not.”

  “Anyway, Moonbeam has Olive Otero’s attention now; I don’t. So there’s nothing to worry about.”

  We drove away from the kite-filled beach sky, past the walkers and cyclists on the bike path beside the road, through lovely Edgartown with its white and gray-shingled houses and gardens of bright flowers, and on to our house in the woods, down at the end of our long, sandy driveway. There we unpacked the mountain of gear you need to have whenever you travel with a baby, and I made my phone calls.

  First to Lawrence Ingalls’s house. A woman answered.

  “My name’s Fonseca,” I said. “I’m calling to express my condolences. I was working and couldn’t get to the funeral.”

  She had a detached-sounding voice. “Thank you. I’m Barbara Singleton. I’m afraid that all the family members have left the island, but if you’ll give me your name again, I’ll be glad to let them know of your call.”

  “Thanks. Like I say, my name is Manuel Fonseca. I talked to Larry just last week, and I was supposed to come up there to the house today. But then this terrible thing happened . . .” I let my voice trail off.

  “You’re right. It has been terrible. We’re all very distressed.”

  Actually, I didn’t think Barbara Singleton sounded too distressed at all. I tried to make sure that I did. Not too distressed, mind you; just distressed enough.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Look, Mrs. Singleton, I know this is the worst possible time to be calling, but Larry and me were working on a little business deal, and I’m afraid that if I don’t tell somebody about it, I may lose out.”

  There was a pause. Then, “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Fonseca. What business deal?”

  “It ain’t a big one, maybe, but it means something to me. It’s them guns of his. I buy, sell, and collect weapons, and Larry told me about them big-game rifles he’s got. Said he might be interested in selling them to me. I was supposed to come up and look at them today, and if I was interested we could maybe make a deal.”

  Barbara Singleton’s voice was cool. “I really don’t think this is the time for such—”

  I interrupted and talked fast. “Now, I understand that I can’t just come up there and make a deal with you, Mrs. Singleton, or probably with anybody else, either, until the will gets read and the family decides what they’re going to do with the estate and all. But Larry and me did talk about them rifles and I’d sure hate to lose out on at least having a look at them while they’re still there. That’s all I want to do, Mrs. Singleton, just get a look at them before some dealer or auction house or whatever maybe takes them off some place and sells them when I can’t be there. I sure would appreciate it, Mrs. Singleton, if I could come up there this afternoon like Larry and me planned I should do. I ain’t gonna take nothing or buy nothing. All I want to do is look at them rifles so later, when things settle out, I can bid on ’em or buy ’em from the family. I sure would appreciate that chance, Mrs. Singleton. And you don’t have to worry about me being some kind of con artist or crook, Mrs. Singleton. Just call the Edgartown police if you want to, and they’ll vouch for me. You ain’t taking any chances having me up there, I’ll tell you for sure. And I won’t be there long, neither. Just long enough to take a quick look at them rifles.”

  I thought my Manny Fonseca imitation had gone on long enough, maybe too long, so I shut up.

  There was a silence at the other end of the line. Then, to my relief, Barbara Singleton said, “Well, if you and Larry talked about this, I guess it’ll be all right. You can look at the rifles, but of course you can’t buy them or take them or anything like that. When can I expect you?”

  “I’ll be up there in an hour. Thanks a lot!”

  Zee and Joshua eyed me from the kitchen door. “Isn’t it against the law to pretend to be somebody else?” asked Zee, frowning.

  I felt a smug smile on my f
ace. “As a matter of fact, it isn’t. Anybody can say they’re anybody. You could claim to be Greta Garbo or Eleanor Roosevelt or the Virgin Mary and it wouldn’t be illegal unless you were using the name for unlawful purposes.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

  “No. Nothing illegal is going to happen. Trust me.”

  “I just don’t want you to get into trouble,” she said. “And don’t quote Zorba to me.” She looked down at Joshua. “I don’t want your dad to be a jailbird, that’s all.”

  Joshua thought that one over, but didn’t say a word.

  I called Manny Fonseca, told him we were supposed to be in Chilmark in an hour, and asked him to pick me up on the way and to drive his truck.

  Ten minutes later, his truck came down the driveway and turned around. I got in and we headed up-island. Manny was happy.

  “So you talked ’em into letting me see them rifles, eh? Good work.”

  I told him how I’d done it, and he slapped his hand against the steering wheel. “Couldn’t have done it better myself, by God!”

  “You just remember that you’re the one who called her,” I said. “I’m only a friend who came along for the ride. Call me J.W. and leave off the Jackson. She might not fancy having me there if she knows who I am.”

  “You got it,” said Manny. He put a hand to his hip and shoved the pistol on his belt into a more comfortable spot. Manny always went heeled. Because, as he said, you just never know.

  It was true that you just never know, but I wasn’t so sure that having a pistol in your pocket would take care of the unexpected very often. I apparently lived a much less dangerous life than did Manny or other gun-toters who needed to constantly bear arms, for my problems were usually better met by other means. Of course, showing my bag of guns to Zack Delwood had stopped him, and if Lawrence Ingalls’s pistol had been in his own pocket instead of in somebody else’s, things might have worked out better for him. So Manny wasn’t completely wrong; you really didn’t ever know.

  — 20 —

  When we turned off North Road, Manny said, “Hey. This is Moonbeam Berube’s driveway. I been here before, but not for a long time. You know Moonbeam?”

  “Who doesn’t know Moonbeam? I see him on the beach and I traded some scallops to him once, for a pig.”

  “Old Moonbeam looks like he’s got some pig in him, himself. You think it’s true what they say about him? That he’s the way he is because ever since the first Berube landed on the island, nobody but kin would marry anybody in the family?”

  I’d heard that story, of course, and others like it. The most famous tradition of incest on the island was the subject of the well-known nineteenth-century investigation of deaf or partially deaf people up-island whose use of sign language caught the attention of scholars and resulted in a printed study of their hearing impairment and its causes.

  “There are a lot of Berubes on this island,” I said, “and I don’t think most of them are even related to Moonbeam. Besides, Moonbeam didn’t marry any of his kin. Connie Berube’s from someplace on the mainland.”

  “I heard that story about him getting her out of a Kentucky whorehouse,” said Manny. “Maybe she’s off-island kin. You know she’s called the cops on him, don’t you? Got a couple of restraining orders to keep him from beating up the kids, but always took him back afterward.”

  Martha’s Vineyard is famous for beauty and its wealthy and well-known visitors and landowners. Its movie stars, politicians, writers, artists, and other celebrities have attracted thousands of less famous people to its shores. In the imaginations of its visitors and in the descriptions of the island in travel guides, the Vineyard is a fairyland of lovely vistas, yacht-filled harbors, quaint and beautiful villages, and golden sands. What few visitors apparently know is that the island’s year-round population, the one still there after the summer people have gone home, is one of the poorest in Massachusetts, and that from this poverty comes all of the domestic violence, crimes, stupidities, and drug and alcohol problems associated with long-term economic deprivation. On the island, as in all small communities, certain people always know about these darker realities. Schoolteachers, doctors and nurses, social workers, ministers and rabbis, and the police know, because their work puts them in contact with poverty’s consequences: beaten children and wives, lying parents and children, drunken adults and teenagers, incest, drug-dealing illiterates, whole lineages whose members have always been in one sort of trouble or another from generation to generation. As the chief once said to me, “If two or three families would move off this island, I’d only have half as much work to do.” It was a phrase that could have been said by the police in any small town.

  Like Manny, I read the weekly records of court proceedings in the local papers and knew that Moonbeam had appeared there on occasion. Once, in fact, he’d been sent away to a mainland brig, but I couldn’t remember why. He wasn’t the only islander who had spent a few months in the calaboose and come back again with his reputation no worse than it had been before.

  We passed Moonbeam’s place and noted that the back-hoe and other clutter was about where it had been before. His pale-skinned, fine-boned children watched us pass, showing no expression on their faces.

  “Look like their ma,” said Manny, as Connie appeared from the far side of the disintegrating house, put a protective hand on the shoulder of her nearest child, and stared at us.

  Their bones were hers, but their eyes were not. Hers were not empty of emotion as were those of her children, or dull and hooded like those of her husband. Connie’s eyes were tired, maybe, but also fierce and bright. Looking back, I watched her watching us until the road turned and I could no longer see her.

  “You ever seen these guns we’re going to look at?” asked Manny.

  “No,” I lied. Why complicate things unnecessarily?

  We pulled up in front of the house and got out. To the north, between us and the Elizabeth Islands, sailboats were moving across the blue water of Vineyard Sound, and a trawler was headed toward Block Island and points west.

  “Pretty,” said Manny, who, like most hunters and other outdoor types, had an eye for nature’s beauties. But scenery was not his interest at the moment; big-game rifles were. He started toward the house, with me in his wake. As we got to the steps, the door opened and Barbara Singleton stepped out onto the roofed entranceway.

  “I’m Barbara Singleton,” she said. “You must be Mr. Fonseca.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Manny Fonseca. Nice of you to let us come by, what with the funeral being just yesterday and all.”

  “That’s quite all right.” She looked past him at me.

  I’d already put on a smile. “Just a friend along for the ride,” I said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “This here’s J.W.,” said Manny. “An old pal. I’m teaching his wife how to shoot.”

  “Zee’s the gunner in our family,” I said, grinning. “I’m lucky to hit a barn from the inside. Sorry about Mr. Ingalls.”

  “Thank you.” She stepped back and held open the door. “Come in, Mr. Fonseca.”

  “Call me Manny, ma’am. I won’t take up much of your time.”

  “And I’m just plain J. W,” I said, as we stepped through the door.

  “This way, please.” Barbara Singleton led the way into the large living area. She seemed to be about forty years old. Her skin and hair were smooth and clean, and she walked with the step of youth. She paused and gestured at the fireplace. “There are two rifles there above the mantel, as you can see. There’s another fireplace in the master bedroom upstairs and a third in the basement. There are other rifles hanging above them, as well. Please look at these two first, and then I’ll show you the others.”

  I glanced at Manny and could almost see the drool on his chin as he looked at the rifles on their pegs. To me they seemed to be fairly normal, if rather old-fashioned, looking guns, but clearly they were more to him.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, and went
toward the fireplace as though toward an altar.

  Barbara Singleton stepped aside and gestured. “You, too, Mr. . . .”

  “J.W., Mrs. Singleton, just J. W. But, no, I’m not particularly interested in guns. Manny’s the one with that bug. I’m more interested in fishing rods.” I looked around the room. It looked the same as the last time I’d seen it. “Nice place you got here.”

  “It is nice, but it’s not my place, Mr. . . . J.W. It belonged to my ex-husband.” There was a wedding ring on her finger. She caught my glance at it, and added: “I’m a widow.”

  “Oh.” I nodded, then frowned, then smiled, then frowned again.

  She took a breath. “I’m afraid I’ve made things more confusing than need be. I was once married to Mr. Ingalls, who owned this house. Later, I remarried. My second husband died two years ago.” A small smile played across her face. “Thus, you see, I am a widow, but not the widow of Lawrence Ingalls, the man who owned this house. He was my ex-husband.”

  “Ah.”

  We stood there for a moment and watched Manny take down the first of the rifles and begin to examine it. I saw now that it was a double-barreled gun. Manny handled it lovingly.

  In a quiet voice, I said, “I have a badge in my wallet, Mrs. Singleton. I’ll show it to you, if you want, but I’m not here officially. I just bummed a ride with Manny in hopes you’d be able to answer some questions about Mr. Ingalls while Manny looks at those rifles.”

  I actually did have my old Boston PD shield with me, but she didn’t ask to see it. Instead, she gave me £ tired look and said, “I’m sure I can’t tell you anything I haven’t already told the other officers who’ve been here, and I couldn’t tell them much at all. Larry and I were divorced almost twenty years ago, and I know very little about his life since then.”

  “You may know something and not even know you do. You’ve remained close to his family, and it’s clear that they trust you to serve their interests here at the house until the estate is settled. The relationship between you and the family is a little unusual, you’ll have to admit. In the years since your divorce, you must have at least heard family conversations about your ex-husband’s activities.”