Third Strike

by Philip R. Craig

  “I’d say that was his loss,” I said. “Would you mind aiming that thing somewhere else?”

  She looked down at the shotgun she was holding and frowned as if she hadn’t seen it before. “Sorry.” She lowered the muzzle so it was pointing at the floor.

  “There were all those worrisome vehicles traipsing in and out, and I had to know what was going on. I figured it wasn’t anything good, so I grabbed my husband’s gun and snuck through the woods.”

  “You and Larry were more than just neighbors,” I said.

  She cocked her head and smiled. “Well, I guess you could say that. You could certainly say we were friends. It wasn’t easy being friends with Larry Bucyck. He lived pretty much in his own muddled head. But sometimes we’d talk about baseball. We had that in common.”

  “You’re a baseball fan?”

  She shrugged. “I played college hoops on scholarship. We both used to be athletes, that’s all. He’d talk about the pressure, how it got so it wasn’t any fun. I could relate to that. I mean, he did it for money, I did it for an education.” She shrugged. “He was a very sad man. Reason I used to come see him, I worried about him doing something to himself. Then today, seeing all those vehicles, that ambulance…”

  “I used to worry about that, too,” I said. “But I thought he’d made peace with it.”

  She shook her head. “He could put on a good front. But he was haunted. Look, you don’t need to worry about the animals. I’ll take care of them till I can figure out what to do with them. I guess I’ll take Rocket home with me. My husband won’t like it, if he even notices, but the hell with him. Rocket’s the sweetest dog.”

  We went outside. She leaned her shotgun against the side of the house, and we sat on some rocks. Rocket came over and nuzzled Sedona’s leg. She dropped her hand so he could lick it.

  “Can you think of anybody who’d want to murder Larry Bucyck?” I said.

  “Besides himself, no,” she said. “He was about the least offensive person I’ve ever known. Only thing is…” She looked up at the sky and shrugged.

  “What?”

  “Well, you know how people are about anybody who’s different? I’ve lived with it all my life, this big gangly black girl who could play basketball better than most boys and beat them at arm wrestling, too. People can be cruel, is all I’m saying.”

  “People were cruel to Larry?”

  She nodded. “That’s one of the reasons he just tried to stay by himself. He looked different and acted different, and people don’t understand somebody who dances to his own tunes, you know? It makes them uncomfortable.”

  I thought about how Larry had ended up face-down in a pigsty with a bullet in the back of his head. I assumed that his murder was connected to what he apparently witnessed on Menemsha Pond a few nights earlier, but it was possible that some sick mind might consider shooting him and dumping his body in a pigsty the ultimate indignity and fitting justice for somebody whose differences they found intolerable.

  “Do you know anybody specific who could do something like that?” I said.

  She shrugged. “Let me think about it. Larry has mentioned some things, and I’ve seen some things. A gang of kids came around last spring and knocked down some of his sculptures. I might be able to find out who they were.”

  “You should tell the police if you have any ideas.”

  She looked at me and smiled. “I should. You’re right. Thing is, my husband might not understand me being involved in all this.” She waved her hand. “Well, the hell with him.”

  “Or you could tell me,” I said. “Looks like I’m going to be down here for a few days. Hang on a minute.”

  I went into Larry’s house, found a pad of paper and a pencil, and wrote down my cell phone number and J.W.’s number.

  I went back outside, gave the paper to Sedona, and sat beside her. “The state police are handling the case,” I said, “if you decide to talk to them. But you can call me. It might be easier. As I said, I’m a lawyer. I can be discreet.”

  She took the paper, looked at it, folded it, and shoved it into the hip pocket of her jeans. “Discreet, huh?”

  I smiled. “It’s about all I’m really good at. It’s my main area of expertise. My specialty, you might say. Discretion.”

  “Oh,” she said, “you’re way too modest. I bet you’re pretty good at a lot of things.” She reached over and touched my arm, then lowered her chin and smiled up at me. “Am I right?”

  Jesus. I was pretty sure she was flirting with me, and right then, for the first time, it occurred to me that Larry Bucyck, the hermit who slept in a hammock and kept chickens and pigs, and Sedona Blaisdell, who lived in a big McMansion unnoticed and unappreciated by her husband, might’ve been something more than neighborly friends.

  I patted her hand where it rested on my arm, then stood up. “If you’re all set with the animals,” I said, “I’d better get going. I’m supposed to be at a friend’s house for dinner, and the martini hour is upon us.”

  She stood up, too. “Don’t worry about the animals. And look. If you need to reach me, my number’s in the phone book. Blaisdell, S. I’ve got my own line.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks.” I held out my hand to her.

  She took it and held on to it for an instant too long.

  I smiled, and she smiled, both of us awkwardly, as if we weren’t sure what, if anything, had passed between us, and then I climbed into Zee’s red Wrangler and got the hell away from there.

  Once I got out onto South Road heading for the Jackson abode, I fished my cell phone from my pocket and called home.

  Evie answered on the first ring. She didn’t say, “Hello,” or, “Hi, honey,” reading my number off her phone’s caller-ID window.

  What she said was, “Are you okay?”

  “Didn’t you get my message?” I said. “I called this morning. I said I was okay.”

  “I heard what you said. Hearing your voice, I figured you were alive. That was a relief.”

  “You’re mad because I didn’t call last night,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, you said you were sorry. When are you coming home?”

  “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Mad at me,” I said.

  “I guess so. Sure. I’m mad. I lay awake half the night, scenarios whirling in my head. Completely unnecessary and thoughtless. So when will you be home?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She paused. “What does that mean?”

  “Look, babe—”

  “Brady,” she said, “what the hell is going on down there?”

  “I don’t want you to worry—”

  “Too late for that. I’m already worried. If you don’t tell me what’s happening, I’ll imagine the very worst possible thing. Nothing you could tell me would make me worry more.”

  I blew out a breath. “Larry was murdered.”

  Evie didn’t say anything.

  “Honey?”

  “I didn’t imagine anything that bad,” she said softly. “Now you’ve got to tell me the truth. Are you in danger?”

  “Me? No. Of course not. Don’t worry about that. What happened to Larry has nothing to do with me. Okay?”

  “Really? Promise?”

  I crossed my fingers. “Promise.”

  “Good,” she said. “Okay.”

  “The police say I’ve got to hang around for a couple more days, though.”

  “Can you tell me what happened? I mean, Larry wanted you down there, and when you get there he’s murdered. What’s it all about, anyway?”

  “It’s a really long story, honey. No matter how I’d tell it, it’s still a long, bad story. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you.”

  “Well, okay,” she said. “I really just want you to be safe and come home.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I possibly can,” I said. “Believe me. If J.W. won’t give me a ride on his catboat, I’ll swim. I’ll let you know as soon as
I know.”

  “You better keep in touch.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  She didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she said, “I like it better when you’re here.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Give my love to J.W. and Zee and the kids.”

  “I will.”

  “Some for you, too.”

  I found myself smiling. “I love you, too.”

  “You better,” she said.

  I pulled into the Jacksons’ driveway fifteen minutes later. When I got out of the car, I looked up at the balcony and saw J.W.’s arm wave. “Come on up,” he yelled.

  Joshua and Diana were playing in their tree house. They called, “Hi, Uncle Brady,” to me, and I said, “Hi, kids,” to them.

  “Wanna come play with us?” said Diana.

  “Later, maybe,” I said. “Your mom and dad need me right now.”

  “He means he wants a martini,” said Joshua to Diana.

  Smart kid.

  I went up onto the balcony. Zee and J.W. were sipping from martini glasses.

  J.W. held up his glass. “Ready for one of these?”

  “At least one,” I said.

  Zee handed her glass to him. “Refill,” she said. J.W. took the martini glasses into the house, and a minute later he returned. He handed a full glass to me. I sat down, put my feet up on the balcony railing, and gazed out over the salt pond to the ocean beyond, where white gulls were wheeling in the afternoon breeze and white sails were inching across the blue water.

  I took a long sip of martini and sighed. “That’s much better.”

  J.W. reached over and poked my leg. “Zee was saying how she ran into Coop this afternoon,” he said, “and he told her he found a school of bonito chasing bait off East Beach yesterday. Isn’t that right, hon?”

  “That’s right,” said Zee. “His clients threw flies at them but couldn’t catch any. Coop said they didn’t know how to cast a fly in the wind. He said competent anglers might’ve had better luck.”

  I took this as a hint that they didn’t want to talk about murder, which struck me as a sound policy for any family cocktail hour.

  So we sipped martinis and talked about fishing, and after a while the subject switched to the Red Sox, and by the time we’d trooped downstairs and called in the kids for dinner, our conversation, punctuated by occasional comfortable silences, had touched on migrating seabirds, Beethoven, Hemingway, skunks, and Errol Flynn.

  Dinner was an excellent chicken salad with home-baked bread. Afterward J.W. brewed a pot of coffee, then wandered outside with the kids. I helped Zee clean up in the kitchen while I waited for the coffeemaker to do its job.

  “J.W. told me about your friend,” she said. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Larry was a sad, unstable man,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure he wanted to live.”

  “Any idea who did it?”

  “No. He told me about seeing a suspicious boat sneaking into Menemsha Pond at midnight earlier this week. He thought they were doing something illegal, and he said they caught him in their spotlight. I wondered if he made it up, or exaggerated it. Larry wasn’t that well balanced. He seemed paranoid.”

  “Well,” Zee said, “since he ended up getting murdered, that would suggest his story was real, wouldn’t it?”

  I nodded. “It surely would. Although I met a friend of his this afternoon, a neighbor woman who apparently watched out for him, who said that intolerant bigots sometimes harassed and bullied him. She also has a husband who might be jealous of the attention she paid to Larry, although she didn’t suggest anything like that.”

  Zee was loading dishes in the dishwasher. Without looking up, she said, “All bigots are intolerant, aren’t they? By definition?”

  I smiled. “I guess you’re right.”

  “You don’t think that’s what happened, do you?” Zee said.

  “No,” I said. “I think it had something to do with what he saw the other night.”

  “I suppose you’re going to try to figure it out, huh?”

  “I feel like I should do something.”

  “And while you’re at it, you’ll probably want J.W. to join you.”

  “I haven’t talked to him about that.”

  “Except you brought him with you this afternoon,” she said, “and he saw the body and waded in the pig muck. You don’t for a minute think he isn’t interested.”

  “Oh, I’m sure J.W.’s interested,” I said. “But he’s already got something he’s working on.”

  “Maybe he could use some help with that,” she said. “Quid pro quo, the two of you.”

  I nodded. “I already thought of that.”

  When we finished cleaning up, Zee called the kids in, and all three of them came, including J.W. I poured us some coffee, and J.W. and I took our mugs up to the balcony while Zee helped Joshua and Diana get ready for bed.

  “You want to tell me more about what you’re working on?” I said to J.W.

  “Sure. Maybe you’ve got some thoughts.”

  He proceeded to bring me up to date about the man who got killed in the boat explosion and the various people he was talking to and those that he was trying to track down. He concluded by telling me—rather proudly, I thought—about picking the lock and prowling around the apartment of a man named Harry Doyle.

  “Breaking and entering,” I said.

  “Damn near got caught, too,” he said. “It got the adrenaline flowing, I can tell you that.”

  “I’d say you’re doing what any competent sleuth would do,” I said. “Kicking the bushes and seeing if anything flies out.”

  “That’s about it,” he said. “I want to find out more about Doyle and Mortison, and I’m not done with this guy Steve. But so far I’m kind of stumped.”

  We sat there sipping coffee and watching the darkness fall over the island.

  “This afternoon I overheard some cops talking,” I said after a few minutes. “It sounded like they’re mobilizing all the police on the island. One of them was complaining about having to cancel a neighborhood cookout. Something’s up. Whatever it is, it’s happening tomorrow.”

  “There are rumors that Joe Callahan is coming to the island to try to settle the strike,” said J.W.

  “The ex-prez,” I said. “That would account for it, all right. You know him, don’t you?”

  He shrugged. “His daughter. One summer when they were vacationing here. She’s a young woman now. I don’t know him really. Met him a couple times, but it’s not like we’re buddies.”

  Zee joined us on the balcony. “So what’re you two Sam Spades hatching? Going sleuthing, are we?”

  J.W. turned to me. “Want to?”

  “Want to what?”

  “Go see if we can spot the boat that Larry Bucyck said he saw?”

  “Why not,” I said. “Doing something always beats sitting around thinking unpleasant thoughts.” I turned to Zee. “Okay with you?”

  She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’d much rather know what you were really up to than have you pretend you’re going fishing because you think I’d worry if I knew you were sleuthing.”

  “Who?” said J.W. “Us?”

  Zee rolled her eyes.

  He turned to me. “We could go fishing.”

  “Let’s go sleuthing,” I said.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “Come with me.”

  We went inside, and I followed J.W. through the house to his office.

  I sat on the sofa. He looked through some stuff in one of the bookshelves, said “Aha,” and came over and sat beside me. He unfolded a road map of Martha’s Vineyard on the coffee table.

  “This is where Larry lived,” he said, jabbing at the map with a pencil. “Show me exactly where he said he saw that boat.”

  He handed me the pencil, and I used the eraser end to trace the general path that Larry and I had taken from his house through the woods to Menemsha Pond. “We walked along the shoreline here—it’s all reedy and m
uddy—and hid behind some rhododendrons right about here. There’s a point of land maybe fifty yards off to the right, and just inside it is a cottage where he said that boat docked. About here.” I pointed with the pencil. “Mumford. That’s who Larry said owns the place. Some doctor who Larry said only comes down in the summer.”

  “Mumford,” mumbled J.W. “Don’t know him.” He stood up and went over to a closet, rummaged around for a while, then emerged with an armload of stuff, which he dumped onto the sofa beside me. “Dark windbreaker for you, dark windbreaker for me,” he said, sorting through it. “Dark Red Sox cap for you, one for me.”

  He draped a pair of binoculars around his neck and stuck a flashlight in his pocket. He gave me a flashlight, too. Then he handed me a big Leatherman tool, which had heavy wire cutters and pliers and a knife blade, not to mention screwdrivers and bottle openers and other useful implements that all folded together cleverly.

  “Don’t know what good the binocs are going to do,” I said. “It’s nighttime, you know.”

  “The binoculars are infrared,” he said. “Got ’em at the Army-Navy store.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  I put the flashlight and Leatherman in my pants pockets.

  “What else do we need?” he said.

  “Depends on how many weeks we plan to stay,” I said. “Stove? Tent?”

  “Yeah,” he said without smiling. “Funny.” He glanced at his watch. “Ready to go?”

  It was around nine-thirty. “Larry said the boat came in around midnight.”

  “A midnight rendezvous with the van at the dock,” said J.W. “Sounds about right to me.”

  “I didn’t really believe him,” I said.

  “Larry?”

  I nodded.

  “Why would he make up something like that?”

  “I just figured he saw something and sort of expanded and distorted it,” I said. “Larry lived alone for a long time. I didn’t really trust his grasp of reality.”

  “It was enough for him to call you in Boston and ask you down here,” said J.W. “And apparently it was convincing enough for you to agree.”

  “His fear was convincing,” I said.